Blog / Purchase to Pay

Automatic for the people

Everybody Hurts, but Sweetness Follows, and you’ll end up feeling like a Man on the Moon. These were songs on REM’s hit album Automatic for the People, but the same sentiment can be felt when your business moves to a Purchase to Pay (P2P) automation solution.

Manual processes weigh Accounts Payable (AP) departments down. Pulling in invoices and other business documents in from multiple sources and approving spends are time-consuming tasks.

But with the right P2P automation solution, your AP department can get on with tasks that will help your organisation stay in control of the budget, improve finance policies and overall efficiency.

Let’s look at the painful tasks that P2P software can take on, so that you can focus on more strategic tasks for the benefit of the entire organisation.

Invoice processing

When handling invoices manually, the whole P2P cycle slows down. Manual processing involves gathering invoices from multiple sources and chasing management approval. It is high-touch, and vulnerable to human error; an invoice that’s delayed in reaching the AP department can have a knock-on effect on the whole process and lead to late payment penalties.

When managed automatically by a P2P automation solution, invoice processing is quick and easy. Palette solutions fully automate transaction processing for invoices, so your AP team can capture early payment discounts, avoid penalties and foster good supplier relationships.

Purchase order matching

Pulling together invoices and purchase orders from emails, printouts and other sources can quickly become a labour intensive, and tedious, process for AP professionals. It’s something that can take up precious time and can again delay payments to suppliers.

When matching purchase orders to invoices and goods received notes automatically, the AP department only needs to get involved if there are any discrepancies. This means that most matching happens automatically, and discrepancies can be dealt with efficiently.

Data retrieval

When invoices and purchase orders are stored and retrieved manually, this usually means pulling together information from many different sources and in many different formats. It can be virtually impossible to find the information you need.

P2P automation solutions, such as PaletteArena, contain tools that can generate the reports you need in an instant. Easy access to the data your AP department needs helps them measure efficiency, resolve issues and produce accurate forecasts. With all purchasing statistics available, the AP department has a solid basis for negotiating prices and terms and the ability to quickly and easily set and measure against key performance indicators.

So by automating its financial and purchasing processes, the AP department can focus on strategic tasks that grow the business. Palette’s P2P solutions can handle the time consuming, error-prone tasks automatically, and that’s good for people across the entire organization. What’s more, they are now available via an easy to use web-based interface that can be accessed from the office or on the road.

Learn more about the benefits with financial process automation by reading our related blog posts Skab mere tid med elektronisk fakturahåndtering and How to maximize your purchase-to-pay investment with KPIs.