Invoicing is an essential part of running any organisation, but the payment process is often riddled with obstacles and extremely inefficient. From late payments that obliterate your cash flow to arduous, manual processes that leave your Accounts Receivable (AR) team feeling frustrated, outdated payment processes can negatively impact business performance.
However, there is a way to streamline the payment cycle, saving you time and money that could be better spent elsewhere in the company. Some call it job tracking software, job management software or a job management system. Either way, with automated invoicing and payment software, everything is digitised and stored on one easy-to-use platform, which ultimately speeds up the whole process and ensures you get paid quicker.
We’ve summarised the most significant benefits that automated invoice processing provides and how it optimises payment lifecycles, enabling you to focus on business priorities instead.
Go Paperless
Going paperless isn’t just environmentally friendly, it makes good business sense.
Paperless processing permanently avoids the risk of invoices becoming forgotten about or lost. Instead, you, your employees and your customers can access cloud-based documents any time, anywhere.
Additionally, going paperless enables you to complete approvals directly on the platform. Invoices won't have to sit, piled on someone's desk for weeks on end and records of the process are catalogued to save time spent searching through old files.
Removing your reliance on paper, also saves money on storage and logistics costs. Companies with hard copies of invoices need to keep them somewhere for auditing purposes, but eventually, they begin to run out of space and need to pay to store them in an off-site location.
Furthermore, data regulations such as GDPR prevent organisations from keeping records after a certain amount of time. As a result, businesses with boxes of paper records in storage will need to pay employees for the manual labour of sorting through and discarding old records.
By contrast, automated invoice processing eliminates the dependence on paper, freeing up time, money, and office space.
Eliminate Repetitive Tasks
For each physical invoice that needs to be processed, someone must input the information manually, print it out, put it in an envelope and mail it off to the customer before filing a copy somewhere in the office.
Repetitive tasks are a morale killer for accounts receivable teams, who currently spend an average of 11 hours manually processing each invoice. When your employees are unhappy, they're more likely to jump ship, leaving you to spend time and money hiring replacements.
Invoicing and payment software is designed to oust the monotony of payment processing by keeping everything in one place and automating administrative tasks. By alleviating your accounts receivable team of burdensome processes, you can expect to see a significant boost in productivity and motivation.
Reduce Human Error
Imagine this: your accounts receivable team posts an invoice to a customer, who receives it several days later. The customer checks the invoice but notices a mistake - the total doesn't match up with the original quote.
Not wanting to pay the incorrect amount, the customer calls your accounts receivable department and disputes the invoice. After some time spent going back and forth over the phone, the AR team realises it was an innocent mistake and then has to correct, print, seal and send off the new invoice, which the customer will receive in a few days.
Seems pretty inefficient.
Invoicing and payment software leaves much less room for human error because it automatically generates invoices using existing company data. Fewer slip-ups mean your team can spend less time processing a single invoice and focus on more pressing tasks that will help to grow your business.
Plus, you won't have to rely on snail mail to send invoices. The software will automatically send invoices to the customer, where they can electronically sign them and issue a payment immediately.
Reduce Wasted Employee Time
Your business is bound to go through peaks and troughs of activity. Therefore, it can be tempting to take on temporary staff when your AR team reaches peak capacity to lighten the load.
But recruitment is very costly and time-consuming, especially when you're hiring non-permanent staff.
Forward-thinking companies invest in invoicing and payment software, which scales as your business does. With automated processes in place, your team will be able to handle invoices much faster, giving them more time to focus on strategic activities instead.
No More Chasing
With a lowered risk of human error, immediate invoice generation and a digital record of all documents, wasting time chasing overdue payments can become a thing of the past.
Automated invoice processing organises what was once a slow but chaotic workflow and streamlines it to ensure you get paid by the deadline.
Rather than spending hours on the phone chasing down your customers, business leaders are investing in invoicing and payment software to empower their AR teams. Companies can continue focusing on business priorities whilst their invoices follow a quick, simple online workflow between your organisation and the customer.
Use Automated Invoice Processing to Streamline Your Payment Cycle with BigChange
Create financial documents quickly based on pre-saved line items or automatically calculated job costs. Generate and share invoices, quotes, estimates, purchase orders and credit notes in seconds with BigChange.
Discover how BigChange can make your business grow stronger, and arrange a free demo today.
