Digital processes are taking over industries at an alarming speed. They provide a ton of advantages over our conventional way of doing things. They make organizing everything easy, do things more efficiently than we do, and most of all, the human error is removed from any processes you adopt them for. AP automation is no different. It brings so much to the table.

Most companies are already trying to adopt these strategies into their company, and you want to be one of them. If you don’t know what AP automation is and are trying to find information about it, then you are at the right place. We’ll explain all the things that AP automation brings to the table. Before beginning, let’s briefly understand what AP or accounts payable automation is.

What is AP automation?

Accounts payable is the portion of the finance department that takes care of paying vendors and sellers. They handle everything related to payments regarding received goods and services. It takes a considerable time for the finance department to do everything manually. If you didn’t already guess, AP automation is the automation of this process. 

In layman’s terms, after adopting the AP automation strategy, you will be paying your vendors electronically rather than doing everything on paper. This digital workflow allows your employees to focus on more important matters and takes a big load. However, it also streamlines processes and makes everything much more accessible. 

Apart from symbolic advantages, you will also save a ton of money. When everything is done on paper, companies spend a considerable chunk of expenditure on stationery. Organizing and maintaining all this paper, in turn, requires more employees. So, you can not only save money that you spent buying a piece, but you can also decrease the task force as maintaining an automation system requires a few individuals. It increases efficiency by taking care of all the time wasters and money eaters. Workload distribution and paper problems are also taken care of.

How AP automation impacts different roles

AP automation plays a huge role in getting a useless load off employees. They can use that time to cover more work and make the company more efficient. In this section, we’ll be going through the impact of AP automation on essential roles in the company:

●    Accounts payable managers

An accounts payable management covers every operation there is of funds payable processes. The managers are considered experts and govern the whole department’s work. Managers are at fault if your accounts payable department isn’t doing so well. When you adopt AP automation, the job of AP managers becomes less tedious. They can become better at what they’re already good at, i.e., managing the AP department. It gives the management staff these advantages:

1. Better visibility along with insights into every payment.

2. Reduced errors like duplicate payments or bounced payments.

3. 24/7 access to the payment portal to remotely perform any action they want.

4. They’ll save time on fielding status updates from vendors.

5. Tools that require less manual work

●    IT managers

The accounts payable department receives a lot of visits from the IT department. Whether it is faulty machines or security risks, IT departments have some reason or the other that they need to dedicate their time and resources to the AP department.

Adopting automation strategies allows IT departments to relieve resources as maintenance of quality AP automation is rarely an occurrence. It also gives more control of the AP department to its managers. 

Security is of great concern in almost every other industry. Digitization has allowed scams and frauds to be committed very quickly. A few slip-ups, and you could be the next victim. Security is an area that AP automation has advanced in already. It allows you to form positive relationships with your vendors. As every piece of information is available to you, it makes processes very smooth.

●    CFO

CFO is the chief financial officer; they are an individual responsible for managing accounts payable strategies and every operation related to finance. It is a CFOs job to ensure that accounts payable is something that helps the company grow by organizing and keeping processes errorless. However, if the operations are kept manual, chances of error increase no matter how good of a strategy you adopt.

AP automation allows the CFO to monitor ongoing and past payments. In addition, it enables new revenue streams by converting to virtual cards. As a result, CFO becomes more and more efficient, allowing your company’s profit to increase.

Conclusion

Many AP automation solutions allow companies to track payment by type, payee, or vendor. This gives complete visibility into the accounts payable department. Another great thing is that adopting AP automation does not take too long. So don’t listen to rumors and talk to the experts before deciding.