Automate and Optimise Accounts Payable

  • Automatic Invoice Entry
  • Prioritising Payments
  • Integration with existing ERP Accounting Systems
  • Saves you Time, Money and Mistakes

What is Accounts Payable Automation?

The Accounts Payable department consists of various processes. Many of these processes have manual elements, such as capturing information from different documents and emails, as well as linking information from different sources.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) uses intelligent software robots that mimic human actions. It is a technology that automates repetitive and rule based tasks, such as automatically capturing accounts and classifying documents, to help you optimise your accounts payable department.

By automating those repetitive tasks, you can better streamline these labour-intensive, manual processes and boost invoice processing. This saves your organisation time, money and unnecessary errors. In addition, automating the Accounts Payable process improves your cash flow.

SmartTechNXT organised a webinar in collaboration with Fortra to discuss the benefits of automating the Payment Process.

Why Automate?

An Accounts Payable team is not deployed to spend their time manually entering data, tracking invoices, or manually matching purchase orders. Not only is this inefficient, but it is prone to costly errors. Automating your payment process is an easy way to reduce costs and improve efficiency.

When automating Accounts Payable, the two most common digital tools applied are:

  • Robotic process automation (RPA)

Software robots take over tedious, repetitive processes, such as monitoring an inbox or entering data into a system or other critical applications.

  • Intelligent document processing (IDP)

Robust, proprietary software eliminates manual document sorting and classification.

The benefits of automating the accounts payable process.

A Standardised Supplier Invoice does not exist! Since each vendor uses its unique format, layout, length, and ERP Software (such as Xero or Sage), the invoices the Accounts Payable team will receive may vary considerably. But since, legally, each of these invoices will have specified information that needs to be extracted, an intelligent Accounts Payable RPA solution can efficiently capture and process invoices and documents regardless of their types and formats.

Our RPA solution provides the following benefits:

  1. Intelligent capture and classification of invoices

Classify and separate data from multi-page invoices and supporting documents. Our intelligent software automatically distinguishes between summaries and line items during recording, for example, to realise automated invoice processing.

  1. Automated report generation

The system can communicate with accounting systems to automatically generate general ledger and budget reports and share them with relevant colleagues.

  1. Sync data

Seamlessly integrate with your existing ERP or P2P system, such as SAP, SYSPRO or PeopleSoft, to automate record keeping, eliminate manual data entry and minimise end-user training.

  1. Archive invoices

Electronic archiving of invoices enables easy access and secure storage of all documents.

  1. Get the correct information from the documentation

Automatically extract essential data from the invoices — from automatic bills to barcodes and, if necessary, forward it to the appropriate systems for further processing.

  1. General Ledger Identification

Automate invoice classification based on search criteria, such as supplier, amount, and category, before payment is made, and use rules to forward documents to other systems.

Why RPA will work for your company’s Accounts Payable processes:

  1. Easy to install

Our software takes hours to set up, not days.

  1. You no longer need to build templates

Our software automatically creates new templates when there are new document structures.

  1. Easy to maintain

If your documents change, our software ensures that your system is always up to date.

The webinar, organised by SmartTechNXT in collaboration with Fortra, discussed the benefits of automating the payment process and the steps we take to implement this.

Presenters:

Keith Fuller, Technical Advisor, HelpSystems

Keith Fuller has been a certified automation specialist with HelpSystems for over fifteen years. He provides remote and on-site customer training and supports the entire HelpSystems Automation portfolio.

Mark Agterdenbosch, MD SANEC for emea – CEO SABA Center – Sr. Business Development Advisor SmartTechNXT – Chair Southern Africa NAFTC-Africa