5 Accounts Payable Pain Points

Accounts payable departments that are still engaged in manual processes tend to experience more challenges and pain points than AP departments that have implemented automation software, like MetaViewer. When we talk with prospects, we ask them where they see their current processes falling short and what their team would identify as their biggest pain points. Here’s what we hear most often:

1. Missing and duplicate invoices: When your processes are physical and manual, it’s often difficult to standardize your procedures. This means that it’s easy to misplace physical invoices if you don’t know how it came into the department (mail, email, fax, etc.) and who it went to. They end up sitting on someone’s desk, not making it to the right department or person, or being filed before being paid. You also run the risk of duplicate invoices because the first one is misplaced so payments may be made multiple times.
   
   
2. Costly and lengthy manual processes: When your AP procedures are manual, it takes longer to process invoices. They have to be printed, scanned, passed on to approvers and filed away. These longer processing times cost your company money due to the price of office supplies, as well as having to pay employees for manually processing invoices and other documents and hunting down lost papers. It also increases error rates which can be very costly.
   
   
3. Late-payment fees and missed early-payment discounts: Manual processes mean that your invoicing procedures take longer, leading to missed early-payment discounts and increased chance of acquiring late-payment fees if payments aren’t made to vendors on-time. 
   
   
4. Physical documents and storage: Physical documents and physical document storage don’t provide the safeguards that your organization needs to make sure that your information and data is secure. It’s easy for documents to be lost and misfiled, and you also run the risk of losing important information in case of disaster, like a flood or fire. It is also difficult to retrieve necessary documents when you need them, like in the case of an unexpected audit.
   
   
5. Risk of fraud: The more manual and physical your processes the more you increase your risk of internal and external fraud. When your documents aren’t digitized, it makes it difficult to limit and control who has access. This means that sensitive information may be at risk, and you could end up the victim of fraud and stolen information.

If your AP department is experiencing these challenges or others, it may be time to investigate a solution. Paperless automation combats these pain points and provides a whole host of benefits. Learn more on our website!