Profits keep a business alive, and invoices are an integral part of maintaining a company's operations. Without the ability to efficiently issue and collect invoices, as well as have them quickly available for reference for financial, planning, and tax purposes, most business wouldn't be able to function for very long.
That is why any method of improving the filling, submitting, reviewing, and processing of invoices can enhance the efficiency and performance of your business. And now there are plenty of ways to do this through automation. Here are some of the best improvements to invoice automation.
Reduce Employee Responsibilities
By automating the invoice processing cycle, you can actually cut down on just how many employees you need to handle finances in your company. One study has found that the more full-time employees required to handles finances, the worse that the company performs. On average, companies that require close to 40 full-time, dedicated staff for only finance, tend to operate far less effectively and efficiently than those that, on average, manage with 12 or less. Automation is what makes a more streamlined department and fewer mistakes possible.
Storage in the Cloud
It's no longer a requirement that your invoices must be filed away in a cabinet, or stuck in one hard-drive on a single computer, or even only in a local network in one building. With decentralized, online storage in the "cloud," your invoices can now be accessed through the internet, meaning that anyone in your company who is authorized to look at an invoice can do so without having to go down to the office to get the job done.
Mobile Processing
Online connectivity, access, and processing are not just limited to laptops either. With the proper automation system in place, apps can be installed on phones and tablets, and they will allow invoicing to be done even while on the go. A quick review and approval can be done in 10 seconds and on a phone, rather than being put off until the next day or necessitating a detour back to the office just to give it a quick glance and approval.
Increased Retrieval Efficiency
Searching for documents and retrieving them are two big consumers of work time in a "manual environment." However, better storage, search, classification, and retrieval techniques can be implemented with automated invoicing. You can set up a variety of parameters, such as date and amount, that will filter and list eligible invoices in seconds. Once all your files are narrowed down, they can immediately be retrieved and viewed.
Organize Filing
In the same way that invoices can be stored and archived based on specific desired characteristics or parameters, processing invoices can also be similarly automated. If you have invoices of a certain amount you always want to go to a particular, priority staff member so that they can review it, an automated system can flag, recognize, and divert these invoices whenever required.
Upgrade your invoice processing system by going automated. Keep your key employees focused on tasks that truly need their attention, and reduce time wasted and errors made.
