Mitigating Risk In Accounts Payable By Investing In Automation
Ar/Ap Meaning
Time is money, as the old adage goes, and for finance executive, no truer words were ever spoken. Automating mundane tasks to increase efficiency and accuracy can be powerful tool when it comes to maximizing bottom line profits. This is especially true for accounts payable automation, as evidenced by the increasing rate of adoption of automated accounts payable solutions. However, with any new technology comes inherent risks that must be considered before making the decision to invest.
In the accounts payable world, the risk of opting out of automation can be significant. Manual accounts payable processes can leave an organization vulnerable to inaccurate cost analysis, manual errors, duplicated accounts, and discrepancies in cash flow. This ultimately leads to decrease in accuracy, transparency, and performance, and can leave company open to costly fraud. Fraud perpetrated through fraudulent invoices and late payments can divert vital capital away from potential ROIs and compromise customer relationships.
Beyond these financial risks, non-automated accounts payable processes can also lead to lost time and opening up the possibility of various audit issues. employeetasked with manual accounts payable processes often have to sift through mountain of paperwork and thereby lose productivity in the form of time and attention taken away from more impactful enterprise projects. There is also the lack of visibility in manual processes that can make audits more time consuming and difficult.
Eliminating these risks with automated accounts payable solutions is the obvious choice, and the feature set of the right solution can provide solution that helps reduce both cost and risk. Advanced analytics combined with automation can minimize the possibility of duplicate accounts and fraudulent invoices, while AI-driven detection tools can help detect discrepancies in cash flow and customer invoices. Automated invoice capture and data extraction technologies help to eliminate manual input, reducing errors and improving efficiency. Automated alerts and notifications can educate users on pending actions that need to be taken on customer accounts.
By leveraging the advanced features of accounts payable automation, financial executives can rest easy knowing that the risk their organization takes on when doing business is minimized. With technological advancements in accounts payable automation, there is little reason not to invest in the improved accuracy and increased productivity it can bring. The bottom line is clear accounts payable automation provides the perfect solution to mitigating risk while driving down cost.
