Invoice Management is one of the fastest growing areas of document management as the “paperless” office is becoming more than a dream for many organisations. Solutions such as Documation’s Invoice Management Solution (IMS) have helped to transform efficiency and productivity. Many AP departments, which have invested in IMS, have reduced manual data entry as well as saving on time and costs associated with processing invoices.

Invoice processing can help small or large businesses to achieve benefits such as:

• Dramatically reduce data entry costs: an invoice management solution will significantly reduce manual data entry and its associated labour costs.
• Cut the cost of invoice authorisation: an invoice management solution will streamline the process of authorising invoices for payment and can save up to 50% of the costs involved.
• Virtually no filing costs: receive massive reductions in labour-intensive filing and retrieval, and benefit from immediate responses to suppliers or internal enquiries.
• Reduce the loss of invoices: invoice management solutions minimises the risk of losing invoices.
• Maximise supplier discounts: increase the amount of supplier discounts achievable through prompt payment of invoices.
• Reduced accounts payable (AP) headcount: automating invoice processing leads to a more efficient AP department and can reduce staff volumes by up to 50%.
• Cut storage costs: filing space can be reduced by up to 95% by storing documents on line where they can be instantly retrieved
• Reduce office costs: reduce the costs and time taken to photocopy and distribute documents internally. Benefit from a reduction in telephone bills as instant retrieval of invoices and related documents eliminates the need for costly call backs.

The above benefits reflect what a business could achieve by switching from a manual process to an automated one; not only will businesses see a decrease in costs they will also see an improvement in efficiency . To improve invoice processing even further, businesses could invest in an invoice coding solution which is designed to help remove issues of invalid or inappropriate General Ledger coding, by allowing procurers to code online.

Invoice coding has traditionally been a very complex and time consuming process. The process often requires procurers to fill out a General Ledger coding form which then has to be keyed into the finance system by the accounts payable team. This is a costly process for both the procurers and the AP team. An invoice coding module, such as Documation’s iCode, can automate the process by:

• Providing facilities for AP to easily select the correct user to code the invoice
• Allowing coding to take place in AP or by the end user
• Providing a web based interface to allow end users to code invoices online
• Providing online search facilities for cost centres/GL codes
• Validating the codes and code combinations online to ensure coding integrity
• Providing intelligent defaults based on a user’s previous coding selection for a given supplier

Providing this automated process will improve the speed of the coding process, which will not only increase the efficiency within the AP and procurement department further, but it will also improve the coding integrity helping to prevent errors or internal business fraud. Other benefits of using Documation’s iCode include:

• Reduced coding processing times
• Faster invoice turnaround
• Reduced AP costs
• Places coding responsibility with the end user

Benefits such as these will provide any business with the means to help significantly improve invoice processing to help reduce costs and gain a faster return on investment. AIIM recently surveyed over 400 hundred of their web community to track the process of paper-free processes and ROI. 52% of respondents report that administrative staff in their organization would be a third or more productive if their processes were work-flowed using scanned forms and documents, with automated data capture. This statistic clearly shows that investing in an invoice processing solution will change your business into a more productive and efficient place of work.

To find out more about Documation’s Invoice Management Solution and Invoice Scanning software, please visit http://www.documation.co.uk/index.html or email info@documation.co.uk.