One way to improve your accounts payable (AP) process is to monitor, measure, and analyze your AP metrics. In fact, regularly tracking these values is key to knowing whether your AP team is meeting its targets and objectives.

It enhances the visibility of your invoice management and approval processes.

In any organization, accounting departments are likely to benefit the most from increased productivity, centralized data, and financial savings — all of which can be achieved with accounts payable (AP) automation. In fact, more and more businesses are turning to cloud-based AP automation solutions for a cost-efficient way to improve risk and cash management, free up internal resources, and enhance security.

The manufacturing industry was one of the first industries to embrace automation. By using technology to facilitate repetitive tasks, manufacturing companies discovered early on that they could maximize their efficiency.

However, not all have been quick to embrace accounts payable (AP) automation in the same way.

The average accounts payable (AP) department deals with a variety of issues on a regular basis. Often, these problems are caused by outdated practices — paper-based invoice processing, check writing, manual record-keeping, and the like. If you’re noticing that the issues with your finances are becoming more costly, then it’s time to stop relying on manual AP processes .

What are the top challenges in accounts payable?
Here are some of the most common AP issues that can plague your business.

Manual data entry is a crucial step in the accounts payable (AP) process, but it’s painfully outdated. If your bookkeepers are still manually transcribing data from one document to another, then you should consider AP automation instead. Here’s why:

1. Manual data entry takes too much time
Manual data entry can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours to complete and can prevent your bookkeepers from performing higher-value tasks.

Utmost efficiency is vital to any nonprofit’s ability to fulfill its mission and serve as many people and organizations as possible. Your nonprofit must also be efficient if you want to attract sponsors whose support is crucial for sustaining operations and fulfilling the organization's goals.

Even in the middle of the coronavirus crisis, cybercriminals and fraudsters remained persistent, attacking organizations already reeling from the effects of the pandemic. The level of danger they pose isn’t likely to change in 2021, so it’s high time you invest in solutions that benefit or augment your business data’s security.

Investing in the right technology can help you overcome the limitations of your small business and achieve the same high-quality outcomes enjoyed by much bigger companies. Accounts payable (AP) automation solutions, such as PaperSave, are a good example of a technology that does this.

Have you adopted the cloud yet? Cloud computing remains among the best technologies you can leverage to save money and make your small- to medium-sized business (SMB) more efficient. One specific and critical area in which the cloud can be a game-changer, especially for SMBs, is invoice management.

Good document organization is vital to your business’s productivity. If your company is not properly organized, paperwork can be misplaced, tasks can pile up, and you can lose valuable time that could’ve been used for more productive tasks.

The problem with paper-based processes
Despite the availability of digital solutions such as accounts payable (AP) automation, many businesses still rely on paper-based processes.