Accounts Payable Automation: A Treasurer’s Best Friend
Blog
Like all businesses, real estate firms are under pressure to find ways to increase cash flow, optimize working capital management, and increase the overall financial health of the business. Real estate firms can accomplish all of this by fully automating their accounts payable processes.
Better visibility
Fully automated accounts payable solutions offer configurable workflows that manage and track invoices during all stages of the processing cycle. This includes receipt, approval, exceptions handling, and posting. Accounts payable departments can assign tasks, view the progress of invoices, reallocate work, and grant permissions depending on authority level. Fully automated accounts payable solutions provide greater visibility into invoicing approval and exceptions workflows, streamlining the process and increasing efficiency. And the technology alerts staff of exceptions. All this improves cash forecasting and planning.
Faster cycle times
Many real estate firms rely on manual, paper-based invoice processes. Manual approaches to invoice processing are extremely time-consuming. By fully automating accounts payable, real estate firms can eliminate manual processes such as data entry, invoice routing, and invoice filing and retrieval to significantly accelerate invoice approval cycles. With automation, companies can reduce invoice approval times from 23 days down to five days, studies show. Faster invoice approval cycle times give real estate firms greater control over the timing of supplier payments, reduces the possibility of late-payment penalties, and opens the door to more early-payment discounts.
Enhanced reporting
Fully automated accounts payable solutions come equipped with configurable dashboards and real-time financial insights to help executives and financial staff improve decision making. The technology offers standard and customized reporting tools, invoice and payment transaction status, budget reporting, and accrual reporting. Users can define criteria and data points for reports.