We all know that our most important goal with accounts receivable is getting your invoices paid. Beyond that, you want to make sure your accounting department is accurate and efficient. One of the best ways to accomplish this is to automate as much as possible in your accounts receivable department. Even if you aren’t experiencing any business halting pain points when it comes to accounts receivable, an automated solution can still save you time and money, which are both valuable resources for any business. Here are a few reasons to automate your accounts receivable:
Error reduction
Sometimes an error in invoicing can cause more trouble than just changing a few numbers and fixing it right away. Some of these mistakes will have a ripple effect that costs you time and money. When you have an automated solution, it can help you cut down on human error, and you can catch errors more easily, and you’ll spend less time fixing errors if they do happen.
On-time payments
Making sure you get payments in quickly and on time is a huge responsibility for accounts receivable offices. With automatic email reminders to follow up on invoices for you, chasing down open invoices can be much easier. This can speed up time to payment. When you get paid quickly, your capital is able to make you money instead of your supplier.
Money-Saving
Bank of America estimates that processing a paper check can cost $4.00 to 20.00. This means if you are processing 100 payments, switching to an automated system can save you around 400 dollars a month with just check processing alone. Creating an invoice and managing from start to end is far more expensive. Even if you always get paid on time, you can still save (and make more money) with an automated solution. Labor is costly, and when it comes to managing invoices manually, tons of time and labor costs are being wasted on creating, processing, sending invoices and collecting money, etc. A simple solution that can manage invoices and follow up with every aspect of them can save your accounting department exponential amounts of time and money.
Improved Cash Flow
At the end of the day, the less you have to spend to keep your cash coming in, the more profitable you are. And the faster you can get paid, the better your cash flow is. Automation helps improve that cash flow.
Ease of Access
Accessing misplaced invoices can be complicated with a manual paper process. When everything is automated and done electronically, you (and your customers, if you provide them with a portal to check) are able to quickly lookup invoices and check the status of them and know everything is up to date. You can easily resend invoices if they are missing – or a customer can get their own copies through a self-service portal, cutting down on the time your team spends chasing them down!
