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Automatic Invoice Management

Written by Ana Canteli on April 16, 2021

Invoice management is a necessary process, which every company must solve, but it can be long, tedious, and expensive.

 Suppose we continue to do it in paper format. In that case, we need several people in charge of processing them, opening, identifying, sending them to departments to control their approval and processing. Enter the invoices in the company's system - the easiest way is to register them in an Excel sheet,  while the payment is managed without forgetting to archive the paper invoice file. And all this, considering that there is no error.

Administration, accounting, or finance departments can devote many resources to mechanizing the process, indexing, and approval of these documents that are so important for the business's development. A company's finances are a fundamental part of its activity, which needs complete and efficient control.

Not surprisingly, the accumulation of unmanaged invoices leads to a loss of control over the process, giving rise to various problems:

• Planning problems,
• Losing sight of the actual workload, not knowing how to manage it.
• Loss of benefits due to prompt payment since organizational issues often lead to late fees.
• Possible conflicts with suppliers.
• Lack of knowledge of the actual situation regarding the cash available in the company.

Not to mention the legal risks that the organization would incur in the event of an inspection.

For all these reasons, it is understandable that any company is interested in gaining efficiency with automated invoice processing, which will allow you to focus on more important tasks. The digital transformation enables the implementation of the paperless office, increasing profitability with its positive effects:

• Better management of payments: the automated invoice processing systems allow to know in real-time the current status of the organization's accounts.
• Saving time: invoice automation offers many advantages, including the liberation of human resources from routine, tedious tasks, with little added value, allowing them to dedicate themselves to more productive tasks.
• Cost reduction: the increase in productivity derived from the process automation implies reducing time and money costs.
• Reduction of errors: one of the most valued positive effects of automated invoice management is that it allows the automatic validation of data and the notification of deviations in case they occur.

The OpenKM document management system offers a practical, intuitive, and 100% customizable Invoice Receiving Module. With it, the organization can benefit from all the advantages of automated invoice processing while offering its collaborators other advantages:

• Provide staff with valuable information: Managers of administration departments will make decisions based on updated and reliable data, collected thanks to the module and stored safely in the invoice management software.
• Make work easier: both the Invoice Receiving Module and OpenKM's document management software can be adapted to any definition of automatic invoice processing, current and in the future. For example, suppose some vendors send their invoices via email. In that case, the administrator can create an automation that uses the OpenKM Microsoft Addin for Outlook and identifies the supplier's emails containing the attached and invoice. If someone sends a paper invoice, a member of the company can digitally transform the invoice. The automated invoice processing software takes care of the identification, indexing, categorization, cataloguing, metadata extraction, and the rest of the services related to the invoice management process. Send a notification to the person in charge for its validation by a digital signature, launch an approval workflow, etc.
• Encourage the collaboration of suppliers: the Invoice Receipt module not only represents advantages for the company - repository centralization, process improvement, increased productivity - as we have said previously; but it also provides exciting benefits for providers. Using the module, bill payment terms are shortened. The incidence of human errors is reduced. They can even use the supplier invoice management software as a support tool for their processes since they can send reminders to fill out submit their information more easily.
• Support regulatory and security compliance of the company: it is another of any organization's fundamental objectives. It can ensure that the organization's activities are carried out following the law, the regulations, and the applicable security measures. The flexibility of the OpenKM document management system and its automating invoice Module guarantee this objective's achievement. OpenKM is compatible with any other system present in the organization.

Request a demo to see how automatic invoice processing simplifies invoice management, improves supplier relationships, and ensures company security.