We are always looking for ways to improve our business. We want to eliminate inefficiencies and increase our profit margins.
Sometimes the answer is not as clear as we typically think. Many people think that their workers are not doing their best or that our new online work environment is holding them back. Companies, large and small, should take this time and rethink how they operate on a day-to-day scale. Specifically, the accounts payable department in businesses is tough to manage and can cause drag or confusion. We will be describing the best improvements and practices in your business that can benefit your company today.
Going Paperless
One of the ways accounts payable slows down your business is the heavy paper flow of your business. Having to wait for the mail to complete work often creates a lull in your company’s workflow. Paperwork can also be lost or damaged which creates too much confusion to deal with.
Electronic billing can eliminate the slow paperwork process that your business faces today. During the pandemic, businesses have been utilizing electronic invoices and accounting software to handle their accounts payable process. Invoices and purchase orders no longer get lost or damaged. As long as they are sorted correctly, finding and processing paperwork should be a breeze.
Giving your customers the option to choose an electronic option also allows you to monitor the process from your phone or computer. You can set up online payment plans to organize when you know your next payments are coming in and be instantly notified instead of waiting for the documents in the mail.
Creating An Organized Online Data Cabinet
Sometimes filing paperwork away in metal containers and then eventually cardboard boxes leads to confusion and disarray when a customer requests a specific document. After you receive any documentation regarding your billing, you should store it in an online archive that holds all financial documentation for all of your customers.
This organization allows you to accurately pay invoices and in a timely manner. You know exactly what has to be paid, who is paying, and what it is you are paying for. This high level of organization also allows you to quickly and accurately fill out your tax information. The tasks that seem to be a drag before no longer seem like a hassle.
Treat Your Customers Like Family
Oftentimes it seems like you are burdened with the idea of reaching out to customers to extract necessary information in order to do your job to the best of your ability. Start reaching out to customers when there is no bad news or issues. Create a relationship with them and establish a culture of trust between you and the vendors you work with. This can lead to better deals in the future, open honest communication, and grow your network. They are more likely to refer you to someone else if you are a pleasure to work with. Also, maintaining a constant dialogue with your customers allows your contact information to be as current as possible so there are no issues in communication when you need to contact them urgently.
Optimize Your Business Expenses
Businesses face major problems when they realize that they have spent more money in a month than they brought in. Creating a business budget explicitly lays out how much money you will be spending at certain times and will improve the end-to-end accounts payable process. You will be more aware of where you stand because you are more conscious of when and what you will be spending in a certain time period.
Your business can also look for discounts on the supplies, inventory, and services you need in order to spend your money in the right place. Obviously buying in bulk will open up discounts for your business, but make sure your company is turning over the inventory before you decide to buy in larger quantities.
Create an Emergency Fund
It would be nice if the business was always booming, but that is not always the case. When things are slow it is easy to fall behind on payments. Creating an emergency fund for extra cash during times of heavy cash flow can help your business maintain steady growth. Creating and contributing to your company’s savings account for emergencies will help you delegate money to payments when you appear to be short on cash. Just be sure to replenish your emergency account when you have the funds to do so.
The accounts payable section of our business is typically strenuous on our eyes and minds. After a few hours, numbers begin to switch places, things go missing, and we feel like we are losing our minds. A perfect example of why transposition in the most common accounting error. A switch between two digits can cause hours of confusion and miscommunication. Today we’ll be going over the most common mistakes made in accounts payable.
Top Challenges in the AP Process 2021
Human Error
Constant data entry is bound to create errors. Like we said before, staring at numbers all day will eventually lead to slip-ups. Manually inputting purchase orders and invoices could create more confusion for other parts of your business when it is time to match up your financial documents. By allowing human error to be a disservice to your business, you could mislead the financial reporting section of your company and cause the leaders of your business to make poor decisions based on misinformation.
Double Payments
If a supplier’s invoice is not processed in a timely manner, they might send a second invoice. So now it seems like a fresh invoice, but now you will end up paying it twice. If you are having trouble keeping track of your invoices, consider switching to electronic invoicing to easily match invoices and purchases to ensure accuracy.
Early Invoice Payments Before Receiving Receipts
Sometimes employees in your accounts payable department will approve payment of an invoice before receiving a receipt. If this product has not been properly handled or delivered, you will have an accounts payable headache. Be patient when it comes to processing your paperwork to ensure the validity of your actions.
Delay in Payments
The suppliers you work with expect to have their payments on time. If you constantly have to tell them that you have lost the invoice or the due date, you could incur fees or lose business. Create an accurate schedule and up reminders to when payments are due to stay up to date in your business.
Slow Invoice Processing
Without an accounts payable automation system, it takes an accounts payable clerk one hour to complete 5 invoices. With an automated system, a single clerk can file 30 invoices an hour. Manually inputting invoices creates drag in your business and it can easily be eliminated. Using an automated system also lowers the demand for physical workers and you can be more efficient with fewer workers.
How to Eliminate These Problems
In the year 2021, it seems bizarre that businesses are still manually inputting data and are experiencing these types of errors. Accounts payable automation system eliminates many of the problems we laid out here today. Automation is the way of the future in more aspects of the business than just the accounts payable sector. It increases efficiency, accuracy, and keeps your suppliers satisfied. By eliminating errors you are able to keep your business running smoothly and make other people enjoy working with you.
Embrace Your Expansion with Better Database Options
Thoughtful business man looking at a database on a board and trying to solve a problem
No matter how much we love buying up Mediterranean and Baltic Avenue and slapping those hotels down, we’re not going to win unless we either acquire more properties (winning strategy) or just hope to get really lucky and have everyone land on those two spots each time around the board (lazy loser strategy). When we expand our property set, our attention gets diverted to a bunch of places at the same time because we need cash to build up everything all at once. If you don’t have a system in place, you can either spread yourself too thin or not maximize your chances quickly enough and end up in the inevitable flip-the-board-because-Aunt-Agnes-is-a-dirty-rotten-cheater situation.
Unfortunately, sometimes being successful comes with its own drawbacks. If your success dictates expansion, you get to a point where you realize that you can’t run a large enterprise and a small business the same way. With that small business, you can keep tabs on pretty much everything by yourself (or hire a small team of employees and cover all your bases for sure). But with a large enterprise, you have to pick and choose what you can address on a given day at a given time. You need to have systems in place to take care of all of the tasks that you can’t get to because you’re only human (but a really successful one!).
When you expand your business, your databases expand as well. Sadly, as your databases expand, they don’t learn how to coordinate with each other. You are the one who has to make sure they all play nice with each other. That can get really tedious once your database count hits 10, 20, 30, and so on. Wouldn’t it be really nice to have some software that takes away those headaches for you and your employees? Wouldn’t you rather have your employees devote their time to something a little more exciting and innovative during the workday?
Guess what? That software exists! It’s called Multitenant, and it does all of this for us:
Groups databases together in containers
Allows us to update databases in batches rather than individually
Lets us schedule multiple simultaneous backups
Creates multiple containers that we can prioritize for different functions
Permits the moving of individual databases into different containers as needed
You can probably already tell why this software is a game-changer. But in case you need more convincing, consider the following benefits.
Increased Efficiency
If your software is updating multiple databases all at the same time, that means you aren’t losing time manually going from database to database. If you have say, 50 databases to maintain, that process will take forever under older software. Multitenant takes care of that for you.
Maximum Consistency
When you have different databases with different priorities and different needs, you’re not going to update them all in the same way. Trying to remember the various needs of each database opens you up to too much human error. With Multitenant, you can set rules for how your databases are maintained so that it’s done right. Every. Single. Time.
Sweet, Sweet Hardware Relief
Multitenant reduces the need for resources because your individual databases all operate within the program instead of being their own separate entities. That’s going to speed up your computing. You could also use that increased amount of resources to accomplish other tasks, too.
Don’t let your success derail your progress just because your business needs change. Develop a plan and let the technology take care of the tedium. Check out the video below from Oracle to get more insight on how Multitenant works. And don’t forget to sing its praises on our social media pages, too!
Like many of you over the past year, your humble blogger has had to do more than a few work-related tasks at home.
“Great! No commute! More time for me!”
Ah, yes. But not so fast there, chief. For more and more of us, it ended up being something more like this:
“Great. No commute. More time…for work.”
And that right there is exactly the problem. When we have more time available for work, we run the risk of not using that time efficiently. It’s a paradox. Just because we do more work at home doesn’t mean we are getting more work done.
But enough about Major League Baseball umpires. Let’s talk about YOUR business and why you should automate your accounts payable tasks.
Automating AP accomplishes three big objectives:
Increased accuracy
Faster processing speed
Better cost-effectiveness
Increased Accuracy
When you’ve got invoices flying all around this big beautiful earth, life is good. Unfortunately, more invoices means more opportunities for mistakes. Most of the time, errors happen because we’re human. When you automate AP, your selected software eliminates all of that.
Faster Processing Speed
Speed is great, but it’s only helpful if you’re accurate at the same time. With AP automation software, you can go digital and rest easy knowing that invoices are processed faster than humans without careless errors. Now THAT’S something worth celebrating.
If you process invoices faster and do it error-free, then it’s only a matter of time before those time savings turn into “cha-ching cha-ching” savings. Think about it. You spend less time sending out notices, the notices are error-free, and you still have your loyal employees ready to handle other tasks that make better use of their talents. Everybody wins. Simply put, when you automate AP, you empower people.
Still not buying it? Check out the clip below from our friends at Oracle. When you’re done being converted, head over to our social media pages and tell us why your life’s about to get better.
Video Transcript:
The Accounts Payable Department in many organizations has to deal with many paper-based invoices coming out of the different channels. An employee has to figure out the type of the invoice, like it’s a purchase order or a non-purchase purchase order. Based on the type of the invoices, they need to redirect for appropriate action taken, as well as if it is a non-purchase order, they have to do a bad coding on top of it.
So this whole process is time-consuming. As well as the data entry at the end, he has to take care of all the process has been completed well or not. And then he can take action and send the data to the APS. In this whole process, sometimes invoices get lost, as well there will be human error at the time of the data entry. And that will add a cost to the company at the end.
As Naresh pointed out, this process has a lot of problems. We are going to tackle this problem using our Integration Cloud Service, which include Process and Insight Analytics. Before going into the demo, let’s introduce who are the persons who are going to participate
in this particular demo.
So we have a buyer, who is Joy. He is the person who bought the item for his personal use.
We have the manager who is going to approve whatever Joy has bought. And we have an Accounts Payable data entry person, who is Renai. She is going to take care of paying the seller. I’m going to play the role of Renai. She is the data entry person into the Accounts Payable Department in the company.
Over here, I am already logged into the Oracle Content and Experience Cloud services, where I will get all the invoices that need to be taken care of. So I can see I have a new invoice that needs to be taken care of. Let me go and see the details about the invoice. So I can see the invoice here, as well as
Content and Experience Cloud services managed to capture all the metadata of the invoice.So you can see it’s been captured here. And I can see status has not been started yet.So I need to start the invoice processing. So just simply–I just need to click here and start the process.
So as I start the process, it will trigger a process cloud on the backend side. And it will send this invoice to the appropriate person, based on the type of the invoice. Like if it’s a purchase order, it will go to the manager to approve.
If it is a non-purchase order, it will go for a buyer accounting. As the invoice that Naresh triggered, since that was the non-purchase order, I got an email which says that the buyer has to complete the coding. I’ll go ahead and click on View online. I can see that this particular invoice has Invoice Type, Invoice Number, and all the details have been filled.
All I have to do is click on this Account Coding dropdown and do the account coding for that particular line item. I can add more line items, if I want.
And if I want to go and check the original invoice, I can click on this icon button over here. And you can see that it pulls up the original invoice. For the time being, I am going to click on Complete, as I have done the account coding. Now once the account coding is done, the manager, who was John, he has to approve this particular invoice. As John, there is a new task in my queue that I need to approve. I’ll go ahead and click on that particular task. I see that the account coding has been completed by the buyer. I can go ahead and click on Approve.
Now, as the manager has approved this particular invoice, it goes back to Renai. The manager has approved the invoice. So now I will get back that invoice with all information that was required. So let me go and see the invoice. I can see the invoice has been processed. Let me click here. OK, I can see the whole details about the invoice. The account coding has been done. I can write the comment, as well as check the history. Let me go and see the inside of the invoice. So this graph shows all the milestones that have been captured for this invoice. You can see it’s been approved by the manager here if you click on that, you will be able to see who has approved this invoice and every detail that is required for data entry to take a decision.
So simply, let me go and Submit the invoice, as I have all the details that are required. Now let’s say if I am the head of the Accounts Payable Department and I want to know what the state of my department is, once I log in as the administrator, I can click on Invoice Processing. And I can see all the invoices that have passed through these different milestones. I can see the Milestone Summary. I can see the Passed Milestones. I can see how many invoices were actually rejected and how many invoices went into error.
Also, if I want to check how much time it takes for processing an invoice, I can check. So here, we can see that for a port invoice, it takes 36 minutes to process. It can be more, depending upon your business process. So this is where I know that where exactly the state is of my Accounts Payable Department. As you’ve seen the demo, with the help of Integration Cloud Services, we can streamline the whole process. So there will be no back and forth email required. As well as for a company, there will be no human error. And there will be no loss of invoices. And managers will be able to take appropriate action based on the analytic dashboard And for a company, it will save a lot of money at the end.
Online payment methods are regularly used around the world. The only difference between how you pay and how your customers pay around the world is the norms of their geographic location. Below are the most popular forms of online payment based upon the region of the world.
Top 10 online payment methods
Platform
Europe
North America
Asia
Australia & New Zealand
Credit/Debit Cards
MasterCard Visa American Express
MasterCard American Express Discover
UnionPay MasterCard Visa
Visa MasterCard American Express
eWallet
PayPal Amazon Pay Google Pay
PayPal Apple Pay Google Pay
WePay Chat AliPay Paytm
PayPal Apple Pay Samsung Pay
Crypto
Bitcoin
Bitcoin
Bitcoin
Bitcoin
Instant Financing
Klarna
Klarna Afterpay
Konbini
zipPay Klarna
There seem to be so many ways we can pay for things and how our businesses can receive transactions. We’ve listed the top 10 online payment methods you should consider now and in the future based on ease of use and coverage around the world. We’ve come a long way in the last 100 years for how we pay for things. Generally, people were able to barter and trade common goods for one another, now we typically focus on paying with the money we have in our bank accounts.
A woman sits with her laptop and financial reports doing her monthly budget.
1. Paypal
PayPal is one of the safest and popular forms of online payment. Its popularity stems from its simplicity and speed. While it is quick and easy to use, they charge a fee depending on the currency being used and the size of the transaction.
2. Amazon Pay
It seems that Amazon has their hands into every scope of business and shopping. Amazon Pay utilizes its users’ accounts to store payment information to ensure a painless payment process. One reason why their platform is so popular is that many third-party websites accept Amazon payment methods. If you have done any shopping online, you probably are familiar with this system.
3. eBay
This company’s payment system allows shoppers to enter their information, process it, and never leave the site. You do not need to have any other accounts to buy or sell items on their marketplace.
4. Google Pay
Once you enter your payment information on your google account, you are able to quickly check out on third-party sites, send or request money from your friends directly, and use your phone to pay in stores. One of the most convenient things about google pay is that it is free to use for you and your customers.
5. Apple Pay
With the mobile telephone market dominated by the iPhone, using Apple Pay seems like a natural choice for many customers to make. Hooking up Apple Pay to your phone allows you to pay with Face ID and without any contact at all. Compared to the typical debit and credit card payments, it allows users to pay in a safer and more secure way.
The top ten online payment solutions include platforms with NFC.
6. Direct Debit Payments
This method of payment takes the money directly out of your account and into the hands of the business. This allows for faster payments and less time for money to be sitting in your accounts payable. Direct Debit Payments also allow you to set up recurring payments to different businesses without ever giving it a second thought. You can read our article about options beyond ACH.
7. Gift Cards
We are all familiar with this form of payment. This card allows you to shop online but is usually restricted to a specific company or retailer. This card cannot be reloaded and is worthless once the amount on the card has been exhausted.
8. Instant Financing for Large Purchases
With instant financing, you no longer have to worry about having enough money in your bank account. This allows purchases to be made in full upfront for the business but allows the customer to create a payment plan for months to come. One of the best parts about this online payment method is that your payment plan is interest-free. The only downside is that you will have to pay a fee upfront to allow you to reap the benefits of later payments.
9.Cryptocurrencies
Cryptocurrencies are on the rise for young investors. With the most popular crypto being BitCoin. When this currency first started, there was a lot of speculation and doubt to whether or not it really had value. Unlike the American Dollar, BitCoin is not backed by any physical assets. Most currencies have a gold backing, but crypto is backed by people believing it has value. Cryptocurrency is very volatile and its worth can change at any given moment so be careful and do your research before you make a decision. To stay current in your business, consider the future of online crypto payments. Even Tesla CEO Elon Musk is accepting BitCoin as a payment method for Tesla products.
The Scope of Online Payments
While there are many options in the fintech world, we understand that the landscape is ever-changing. What is popular today may be replaced by a new option in six months. We will try our best to update this article as the options become available.
