- Get a better understanding of your payments. A simple and intuitive invoice capture system. An automated approval process for both desktop and mobile devices.
- Paper-intensive processes like accounts payable (A/P) invoice processing are likely candidates for automation. A/P processes are still largely manual and paper-intensive in many organizations. When the volume of invoices grows, these manual procedures begin to show their limits.
- Receiving paper invoices and matching them to purchase orders (POs) and general ledger (GL) coding are challenges for businesses. Lack of automation causes bigger business difficulties such as accruals for financial closing and a lack of visibility into corporate spending.
- To improve cash management, CFOs and corporate controllers need visibility into the A/P process in order to simplify reconciliation, streamline accruals, and produce more accurate financial statements. How can your business reduce the time and effort it takes to process invoices?
- Eliminate manual data entry and associated errors.
- Avoid rework from having to key or reprocess invoices.
- Simplify exception processing when invoices aren’t matched to POS or aren’t coded correctly.
- Improve vendor relationships. Optimize payment terms.
- Increase visibility throughout the Accounts Payable process.
- Manual invoicing processes are time-consuming and expensive to manage. A digital business strategy utilizes digital assets to create value and revenue. It goes beyond the process. Due to the high workload, A/P users are more prone to make mistakes during data entry. In such manual processes, invoices “fall through the cracks.” A/P staff may fall behind, resulting in the company losing out on early payment discounts or having to pay late penalties and fees. Around 22 percent of suppliers offer early payment discounts, but many organizations aren’t well-prepared to take advantage of them.
- Most organizations receive invoices through a variety of channels. Some of these invoices are already in electronic format. Invoices must be manually entered and coded against purchase orders or GL accounts. This basic cycle is depicted below.
Bautomate works directly with your Oracle system, and automates capture, workflows, documentation, and provides seamless integration to your ERP, thus providing an end-to-end oracle automation solution
Capture, Extract, and Index
- Around 80 percent of all data entry is eliminated by optical character recognition (OCR) technology, which automates manual tasks such as indexing documents and entering data. An intelligent document capture system can validate the invoice details against your purchase request by looking up the PO number in the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. This type of system also allows employees to securely store and retrieve documents, as well as annotate photographs before routing them around the organization.
- These systems should allow you to categorize each document as an invoice, correspondence, credit memo, or other types of document. Each indexed field can be set up to make future searching easier. The Purchase Order Number field, for example, can be linked to an accounting database.
- Once the correct information has been extracted, it is stored in a Document management system with an image of the original document. Users with permission can search for and view these documents online. Workers can annotate the documents and send the updated images to other workers, perhaps with an expense receipt or noting a line-item discrepancy.
- Paper invoices are captured using AI-powered OCR. Paper is captured with a 95 percent+ accuracy, while electronic files are 100% accurate.
Process and Manage
- Once you have extracted and recognized the data, you need automated methods for processing the invoice. GL coding, two-way matching, and three-way matching are all examples of different steps of non-PO and PO invoices. You also need automated methods for routing the invoices to the A/P system’s back-end for approval and entering the data.
- Manual tasks are automated by Bautomate’s business process management and workflow technology. Users can review and approve invoices automatically. Invoices can be flagged at the header level or on line items.
- Automated workflow to designated roles in the company. One-click approvals in email. Ad hoc routing without having to code.
- Intelligent 3 Way PO Matching: POs and/or goods receipts can be matched in two or three ways at the header or line level. Matched invoices are sent directly to Oracle. Exceptions are flagged and sent to approvers for reconciliation.
- Using Bautomate’s BautoLenz, Financial personnel can track invoices after they enter this systematic workflow to see who is sending them, what the totals are when they are due, who changed them, and who approved them when they were approved, and the amount of the total liabilities. This workflow is followed on every invoice, and there is a complete audit trail of all the steps.
Store and Access
- Any type of document from any source can be securely stored in a Bautomate document management system. Items are only accessible by the appropriate parties when security settings are set based on roles. The document management system can be used to capture all changes and annotations.
- All documents, records, approvals, transactions, and payments are indexed and stored for easy access by A/P users. Auditors may be given self-service access to the system in some circumstances.
- Complete storage and access system allow you to set retention periods so that records and images automatically comply with corporate retention policies without the need for human intervention. Automating invoice storage and access not only simplifies compliance activities, but also helps the company avoid costly fines, simplify decision-making, and resolve account discrepancies in the future.
- For searching, reporting, and audit trail purposes, invoices, purchase orders, and goods receipts are archived in the Cloud. All documents, as well as electronic messages between employees and vendors/suppliers, are included.
Bautomate integration to Oracle E-Business Suite allows for seamless bi-directional integration.
Integrate with Enterprise Resource Planning Systems.
- Automation of accounts payable processes is valuable, but true economies of scale come from an integration with the underlying business systems. You must be able to extract the relevant data from your A/P process.
- The straight-through processing volumes of companies that have connected their accounts payable and ERP solutions exceed those of other firms.
- A complete solution should be able to capture invoices from multiple channels, create and store electronic pictures of those invoices, retrieve electronic copies from within the context of familiar applications and work tasks, remove information from images to populate invoice fields, perform account coding, automatically match invoices with buy orders, and integrate the results into enterprise applications and systems of record. Data entering tasks are reduced, enterprise applications contain more accurate information, and account coding and matching duties become more consistent.
