Create Templates for Recurring AP Invoices in Your AP Automation Solution

If you’re in Real Estate, chances are you have many recurring AP invoices from the same vendor – law firms, marketing companies, landscapers, among others. Keying them in one-by-one when they come each month, quarter, or even year, isn’t a great use of anyone’s time, especially your AP team’s.

Fortunately, some AP automation companies let you create templates that you can use and reuse, letting you save time processing and paying these recurring AP invoices.

How recurring invoice templates work

Let’s say you regularly use Acme Lawncare for landscaping at your Main St. property. You could set up a recurring AP invoice template specific to this vendor in your AP automation tool.

Then, whenever Acme performs work and sends you the bill, you can simply log in to your AP automation account and bring up the Acme invoice template. The fields of the invoice will be automatically pre-populated with most, if not all, of the details you need (for example, Acme’s company info, the Main St. building’s address, and services provided of mowing and mulching).

You would then add any of the variable fields like invoice date, invoice number, and any non-standard services Acme performed on their visit, like planting bushes.

From there, you’d just validate that everything else on the invoice appeared correctly and submit the invoice for approval(s), using your automated workflows.

So, with no additional ingestion work and just a few keystrokes, you can get your recurring invoices for Acme entered and sent off for approval(s).

Speed up processing of recurring AP invoices even more with schedules

Some AP automation tools will even let you auto-generate these recurring AP invoices on a set schedule. So, if Acme’s invoices are always for a consistent dollar amount, and they come like clockwork every quarter, you can have your AP tool automatically create these invoices in your AP system.

Invoices can then either be automatically submitted for approval or set to “open” and sent to the correct invoice approver’s queue for review.

This scheduling feature can be particularly useful for work that’s done as part of a contract. And it can provide peace of mind knowing you won’t miss payments to an important supplier because the invoice was never entered.

Use templates and scheduling to simplify purchase orders, too

If your Real Estate company requires purchase orders, this type of template and scheduling functionality can help employees comply with purchasing requirements. You can set up purchase order templates that are 98% complete – and employees just need to add one or two more fields before submitting the PO for approval(s).

You can also schedule a purchase order to be automatically created each month with your regular office supplies order.

Recurring AP invoice templates and schedules save time for AP