The Importance of Integrating Your AP Automation Solution with Your ERP

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems have countless benefits. By unifying data from key areas like finance, accounting, human resources, and the supply chain, ERP software can steer your company toward the right direction

Most of today’s ERP systems are modular in structure, allowing you to integrate various tools to answer any specific need your company may have. For accounting and finance, integrating your ERP with an account payable (AP) automation solution like PairSoft will expand the former’s capabilities, making it a more powerful business tool than ever before.

What are the benefits of integrating AP automation with ERP?

To answer this question, you need a clear picture of how ERP boosts your finance and accounting processes. Although different ERP systems may have different features, you’ll find that they can all:

• Produce incredibly detailed financial reports that help you make informed decisions. These reports may include comprehensive projections of your cash flow, income statements, inventory, receivables, and other existing data.
• Streamline your accounting process by automating entire workflows. These include simple but crucial tasks like invoice approvals and transaction tracking.
• Give you better control over your company’s direction by providing reliable, real-time projections of how your decisions will affect your bottom line.

ERP by itself already brings much to the table. But by integrating it with an AP automation solution, you can:

#1. Go paperless

Having an ERP system in place doesn’t spare your business from manual, paper-centric processes and the disadvantages that come with them. In fact, you’d still need to receive or send your invoices by mail or courier and manually enter data into your system. With manual data entry comes a high risk of mistakes and duplicates that can bog down your overall efficiency and reduce the accuracy of your projections.

Paper invoices are also prone to being misplaced or misfiled. Bear in mind that misfiling can set your company back $120, while reproducing a lost document can cost up to $220. What’s even worse, paper invoices are hard to trace. Continuously depending on them makes your company more susceptible to fraud.

An AP automation solution lets you adopt a safer, more efficient, paperless process. PairSoft, in particular, lets you capture data straight from invoices, whether they’re in paper or electronic form. It even lets you process data using your phone camera. PairSoft’s Electronic Document Imaging technology converts the data into an electronic file that you can then tag, sort, and store in your ERP. This feature eliminates the need for manual data entry, reducing the risk of errors, duplicates, and fraud.

Paper-based processes are also bad for the environment. AP automation lowers your paper consumption, making it an environmentally friendly option.

#2. Speed up the approval process

With an ERP system, you can assign unique roles to different users. ERP allows you to determine which files employees can access to do their job. Plus, with AP automation, you can design automated workflows that forward invoices and other financial documents to the right people. For instance, once an invoice has been processed into the ERP system, AP automation instantly sends it to the appropriate approval manager with the right authorization level.

PairSoft even lets you make approvals through your mobile phone or tablet, so you can do your job on the go. All you have to do is install their app on your device.

#3. Improves visibility of your payables

If you’re using different payment methods, keeping track of your general ledger’s balance could mean poring over credit card records, bank statements, and other payment data. Even with all your records stored in your ERP system, this process will take time.

After you’ve stored your documents, AP automation tools allow you to search your records using various categories and methods, including the data on the document itself, metadata, profile information, and others. This makes retrieving records and keeping track of your payables a breeze.

ERP systems are a crucial and powerful business tool, but they have plenty of room for improvement, particularly in terms of how they handle the AP process. By integrating with the top ERP software in the market today, lets you effectively and efficiently manage your invoices and payables, and gives you a better grasp of your company’s finances.