Paying Invoices, but to the Wrong Vendor...BIG MISTAKE!

Has this happened to you or someone you know? Of course if you aren’t an accountant you might not see the humour in there! But then you would also not be reading this either!

Anyway, this kind of thing is more common than you might think. Paper causes problems; they can get lost, burnt, wet, ripped – you name it - paper is easily destructible. And we people make mistakes. So is there a system and a way to reduce that human touch and error? YES! AP Automation is here, and solves much of these issues. And to obvious those embarrassing situations, e-pay is here to help.  It all starts with electronic purchase orders.

In the “olden days”, companies had to hand write PO’s in triplicate, send off copies to accounting, the supplier and the receiver. Then the product came in and was received and that information had to be send to accounting with another piece of paper and so on a and so on. In fact this system could cost anywhere from $31 per PO to $88 depending on the organizations size (source The Supplier Enablement Benchmark Report - AberdeenGroup KPIs & Metrics Mar, 2006). Even the “best-in-class” spend $28 to produce and process a PO.  So once you had spend $50 ordering the item you then spend between $30 and $60 paying for it, in processing costs of manual AP and printed cheque payment. Invoices arrived, were stamped, routed for signature and coding (some never left the supervisors desk!) and manually entered into the accounting software for payment. Then a check is cut and mailed out, if there were no errors made along the way. The average company takes 10 to 25 days to get through this process and is spending far too much on the process.

Stay tuned for more fun demonstrations of AP hazards, there are so many! And think about automation, the paperless, painless way to make the computer work for you for a change!

Data Entry Be Gone, Hello Email to Capture

Life just got so much easier for anyone who has to deal with ap invoices. Now in Beanbills, you can simple stand at your scanner, load up your invoice, push scan, and bright and early the next day you'll have the invoice image electronically with all its verified data. Ready to push along its workflow.

Even better, give your suppliers a Beanbills email address, and they can email directly into Beanbills, no more scanning!! No more data entry!!

What has been standing in the way of the paperless future is not technology, because that's available. But all the technologies that have to communicate to make it possible. Using email, which everyone knows and trusts, is robust and common, and the simplest way to make getting invoice information into electronic  usable data. Without any disruption to the way we work and using the same technologies.

Start getting your suppliers to email their invoices to you. Email bill presentment is a happening trend. It's an obvious time saver for everyone, especially the supplier/vendor. No more printing, wasting paper, stuffing envelopes, mail costs... it's an expensive operation.

One more benefit. Every Beanbills user has an email capture address. You can stand at the copy machine and scan-email an invoice, or forward them if they came via email, to Dave in AP's address. Bang, the next day they're in his Intray all electronic and ready to deal with.

Join the Revolution! Reduce Your Invoice Processing Costs

Further to the discussion on Accounts Payable processing costs, we thought you might want to know what gets in the way of automation. Paper AP is the necessary evil in many organizations and change is harder than it seems. 

Some might not trust the digital image concept, others like to "feel it" in their hands and yet others have disbelief around the real costs of their manual system versus automation and the potential savings. It is true that reducing the overall costs from $37 to $4 is quantifiable but are those savings really coming off the bottom line and what needs to happen to achieve that? Yes absolutely, opportunity costs and labour costs are real. 

How can an organization find its way to embrace the future rather than fear it?
 
In the last 35 years, computers changed accounting dramatically, gone was the way of the hand written ledger and its manual posting. If any accountant heard of a company NOT using computerized accounting software today, they would assume their clients were in the dark ages! But how did that change occur? To trust the DOS based systems of those early days, must have been very difficult for many. Nevertheless, they adopted and adapted to the faster easier way. Let machines do the repeated work that is mindless.
 
Mo Kelly, from Rockwall Computers says it well in his blog; http://www.accountingsoftware411.com/Press/PressDocView.aspx?docid=11038

"The big changes in accounting seemed to happen when we changed platforms. Major changes happened when we went from paper to computer. Another major change was from mainframe computers to PC's. Then the next big change was from text based user interfaces to graphic user interfaces. Everyone says that someday we will no longer have software to load on our computers. We will only have browsers and servers. That will be a major platform change.

The motivating factor for changing platforms has been to take advantage of new ways to integrate software. The one concept that is responsible for 90% of the time saved with computers? - Integration.

I honestly believe that we are seeing the final revolution in accounting software. Now accounting packages can grow endlessly and never be obsolete. Object oriented software allows us to reuse software for other applications. Development takes less time. There will never again be a need to create new software because of a platform change. Web based software can be integrated with any process anywhere in the world. How can any new concept compete, especially since it is free?

What does this revolution mean to you? If your company is not ready to get rid of an old, obsolete, client-server, proprietary software package, you may experience similar problems to those in the 80's that claimed they did not need a computer in their business. That is what happens in a revolution."

Well, this holds true for automation of AP workflow too. We have entered a new century with a new way to do this work with much less effort and the mindless tasks and delays that go with paper should be gone. The same things that must have interfered with the adoption of modern accounting software (sadly, I am old enough to say I used the one-write system!) are effecting AP automation adoption today. Innovative thinking controllers will lead the way and then the rest will fall or follow.
 
Accounting went relatively unchanged from the time of the Egyptians until the invention of the computer and its realistic application in the 1970's. Now software applications are moving to the web.

The ability (or inability) to implement change is a company's best asset or worse enemy. Early adopters of technology will be the pack to the pot of gold. This is true for AP automation. Money is wasted every day on the paper way. Organizations need to go back in time to remember what was like before computers, and how much time was wasted on manual systems.

Bring on the AP Automation for Timberline

We're pleased to announce that beanbills is now fully integrated with Timberline Office. Thanks to our friends at Constructive Solutions who helped implement the solution. Our customers using Timberline can now take advantage of all the benefits of Accounts Payable Automation by exchanging data directly with their Timberline software.

Five Tech Trends You Can't Ignore as an Accounting Professional

Took these out of a recent article in the AICPA Insider Online Magazine, by Rick Telberg/At Large.

* Cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS);

* Mobile devices, from netbooks to Smartphones;

* Smarter scanning and recognition for document management;

* Virtualization to get the most of your existing servers; and

* Social media tools and strategies (like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn).