The CFO’s guide to reducing Invoice processing costs by 70%

All my bills say “Outstanding”. So, I must be doing a great job! – said no one ever.

In a large corporation, the activity of ‘paying bills’ is inevitably much more complicated than your monthly routine of paying the dues at home. Despite having sophisticated systems and processes, companies take 60-90 days to pay for invoices.

By the time the invoice shows up, the commitment to spend has been made and approved. From the financial control perspective, it is no longer a question of whether we should be spending this amount or not. Then why does it take so long?

Most Financial Controllers and A/P Heads say they have a good Invoice Management System already in place. Then why have a 60-90 days lag period to pay?

We at Expenzing have a decade worth of data and domain experience to understand why this happens, and we have built several mechanisms in the Expenzing Procure to Pay solution, to dramatically bring this time and cost down.

Here are TOP 7 ways that CFO’s suggest, will make it possible to bring the Invoice Processing Costs and Time down by up to 70%.

1. Automated Due Diligence



A/P teams spenda lot of time struggling to find answers to basic questions,:

• “Is this invoice billed correctly?
• Does it look like a duplicate invoice?
• Has it been paid before? (We all know it happens!)
• To which department does this invoice belong?
• Who is responsible for this supplier?
• Is this invoice against an expired Purchase Order?
• Is it authorized to pay?

Finding the answers to all these questions would exhaust even the famed Sherlock Holmes!

Wouldn’t it be great if you had an automated checklist against ready data, that would flag any alerts? Expenzing’s automated due diligence brings down work from days to mere minutes, thereby reducing your cost and effort significantly.

2. “No PO  –  No Pay”



Process rules like “No PO – No Pay” can be set in an integrated Procure-to-Pay system. An isolated procurement system may have all the bells and whistles but does not have a system to automatically match Invoices against the PO leaves gaping holes in the process. If the “Purchase Order to Goods Receipt Note to Invoice” traceability is transparent, then the approval rules for the invoice can be simplified drastically. These automated rules make audits a breeze!

3. System-enforced Rate Contracts



Rate Contracts are an effective mechanism for cost control when consuming services and operational expenses. However, when such contracts are centrally signed, the question always remains: are they being enforced when those items are being procured? Are these purchases even being made from the vendors with whom the company has a rate contract?

When the head office negotiates and finalizes rates with vendors, publishes them across departments and locations, how should they ensure that deviations don’t happen at the branches? Companies can save thousands of dollars by enforcing rates using this rate card control tool in the Procure to Pay system.

4. Automated Supplier Due Diligence



Accounting / ERP systems do help Accounts Payable teams to check the Supplier List of empaneled vendors. But additional questions like:

• Is this supplier approved?
• Is this supplier’s GST registration number validated?
• Does the supplier have a Lower TDS certificate? What is its threshold limit?
• Do we have all documents collected and checked for this supplier?

Accounts Payable teams struggle to maintain a ready reference of supplier information, especially in a large corporation with hundreds of branches. Having this updated information at the time of invoice processing can save precious time and wastages.

5. On-Time Payment



Many organizations have streamlined their A/P processes to pay all supplier invoices within the stipulated due dates. This not only reduces any business penalties or disruption, but also improves supplier relations, and enhances bargaining power when renewing contracts. Expenzing Procure-to-pay helps ensure you stick to the promise you make to your suppliers.

6. Easy Inwarding of Supplier Invoices by Business Users



Many companies outsource data entry of supplier invoices and pay large amounts of money every month for this activity. Imagine if you could get your business user to fill that information in 3 simple steps, or better still, get your supplier to log in online and submit the invoices on your portal. This is especially fruitful when the first round of checking is done during the inwarding process to eliminate gaps or errors. Suppliers love the idea of online submission of invoices because it assures them of timely payment.

7. Integration with your Accounting System – A good Procure to Pay system should integrate with your accounting system seamlessly. This would save time, errors, and tedium.

Over the past decade, Expenzing has had one focus: to help enterprises bring in spend control while bringing in tighter governance. The product suite fulfills this objective by providing tools and features to enable this effectively. Watch this space for more on Financial Control, Spend Management, eProcurement, and Expense Management.