Asking the Experts About…Invoice Best Practices
Businesses are looking for new ways to automate their processes, from gaining greater visibility over spend to improving compliance across the board. That’s where Concur Invoice comes in.
Knowing how to utilise the solution so it’s meeting your business goals can be tricky. So, we sat down with Concur Invoice experts to find out what best practices you should be following and answer any questions businesses may have in our webinar series: Ask an Expert.
How Concur Invoice Streamlines Strategies
Moving from a manual to a digital invoice process “eradicates the pain of trying to track down the right person to deal with an invoice when popping over to their desk isn’t possible”, Adrian Sage, Solutions Consultant for SAP Concur said during the webinar.
Concur Invoice scans all your invoices to find any unusual or duplicate order details as well as highlighting when an invoice isn’t attached to a purchase order. It saves time by sifting out only the invoices that need a manual review. “Now, more than ever, it’s important to stay ahead of any fraudulent invoices that may slip through the net,” explained Adrian.
Investing in a solution that scales as your business grows is imperative, as Michael Benn, Senior Account Executive at SAP Concur explained, “scaling internationally is a really big step for a business”. Concur Invoice has the capability to pay in multiple different currencies and it “can either capture your spend and send that to your finance team for you to settle in the traditional manner, or alternatively, something that’s really exciting for a lot of customers is that can leverage our partner network to help optimise the way they pay internationally.”
Meet Your Unique Business Goals
Concur Invoice captures data on invoices using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. This extracts all the important information, so you don’t have to – including vendor details, invoice details and itemisation summary. The solution can pull information and send the invoice to the appropriate user for approval, as Sonia Blaudez, Solutions Consultant, UK&I, SAP Concur confirms “you could assign vendor one, two and three to your AP person and that means when those invoices are captured, they will automatically go to the person’s queue to be looked at”.
Concur Invoice offers Purchase Request which can be used to elevate vendor management. It allows businesses to set up pre-approvals for purchases before the expense has happened, this can also be checked against loaded budgets. You can use Purchase Request to match invoices to purchase numbers so you can make sure you’re only paying for what you need.
Sonia explained that “by creating a purchase requisition that goes to your manager, you are effectively asking for pre-authorisation to spend. All of this happens before the spend is committed with the supplier.” This will improve compliance as well as stamping out any overspend.
With employees working from home and the world shifting to a new hybrid way of working, approvals need to be able to take place anywhere, at any time. The Concur mobile app gives users the capability to review any invoice details and allows purchases to be approved from home and on the go. This will reduce the chance of late payments by ensuring invoices are paid on time and can be done so remotely. Businesses can use the Budget product to gain full visibility into what funds are available before approving a purchase request or expense.
Gain greater visibility over your invoices for your AP team by using Concur Invoice Manager. It gives you an overview of all unpaid invoices at any given time, as well as being able to track all of your back office tasks. “Anything that’s waiting to be approved or processed, they know exactly what’s going on and they can access that area very quickly”, Adrian said. Invoice Manager presents a dashboard of invoices and will flag invoices that are either due soon or are overdue on payment so you can keep on top of payments easier.
Getting the Most from Your Solution
Concur Invoice can optimise your processes to help reach your business goals while saving time and money. It gives you greater visibility of invoice payments, telling you when they need to be paid as well as if they’re overdue. You will be investing in a solution that is totally scalable and has capabilities to manage spend internationally so you can grow with confidence.
To find out even more best practices, tip and tricks, and hear answers to invoicing questions, register now for the Ask an Expert: Invoice webinar.
