Extend Automation to AP and Go from Paper to Productivity

Accounts payable departments lacking automation and consistent processes spend 4 times as much processing invoices,consuming13 hours a week per team member.¹ It’s little wonder that controllers rate AP as the most resource-intensive finance function.²

And with 64% of decision-makers saying their businesses are feeling pressure to more effectively manage costs and resources,³ statistics like those make AP good target for automation that can increase efficiency, control, insights, and agility. Our new eBook explores ways businesses can benefit from adding Concur Invoice to the Concur Expense solution, resulting in more automated, connected, and productive spend management.

Extending Automation to Accounts Payable 

Learn how pairing Concur Invoice with Concur Expense to automate AP processes can take your business from paper to productivity and make it more efficient and ready for change.

Download the eBook

When you extend your platform, automation allows you to replace a cumbersome manual process often performed on paper, in spreadsheets, and via email. It’s a process where costs may be higher than realised and may leave your business less prepared for the future.

By automating AP with SAP Concur solutions, you can:

• Stay ahead of budgets and costs as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning turn PDFs and emails into digital invoices, quickly capture spend information, and increase visibility.  
• Realise the potential of AI with solutions that use our vast data set to reveal opportunities for savings and analyse transactions to generate specific recommendations for improvement.
• Strengthen control by automatically applying policies and approval rules, while the system automatically compares invoices, purchase orders, and the goods and services delivered.
• Adapt processes and plans across the business through a single, connected platform that can accommodate different business units in different locations and scale as you do.

What are Best Practices of an Efficient Invoice Process?

When considering an invoice solution, it’s beneficial to know where your business stands and what it should aspire to – in other words, best practices.

You can start with an internal audit of sorts to assess things like how many invoices come on paper and must be scanned, what amount of data requires rekeying, the number of duplicate invoices and how long they take to spot, and whether details from invoices are readily integrated with other spending data.

Next, measure the actual cost of the process, determining such factors as average amount per invoice, hourly cost per employee, time spent on exceptions, and, of course, the overall tally. Additional steps include finding the inefficiencies in your current process, making the tools used mobile, finding ways to save time – centralising where invoices are sent and using virtual payments, for example – and stopping critical costs such as late payment fees.

How Will My Days Look After Automation?

The daily fundamentals of AP will remain once you automate the invoice process. Invoices will arrive, payments will be scheduled, and suppliers will check on their money. What changes are how and how quickly, which buys time for other gratifying work.

You’ll improve the ability to monitor for high-volume suppliers, along with the data to seek potential discounts from them. The comprehensive information pulled from receipts and expense reports is visible on dashboards where you can monitor budgets – and establish audit trails and compliance. Similarly, with a fuller picture of spending and cash flow, you can better advise other company leaders.

How Can I Make the Case for Automating AP?

Knowing well the time and energy AP takes at your company, you might be sold on extending automation. But others might need to be persuaded, concerned with the investment or just holding to the belief that the status quo works fine.

Making the case involves assembling data, like that adding invoice management solution saves £12 per invoice and an estimated 134 hours weekly for finance and AP teams.⁴ And enlisting key stakeholders is essential, from top executives wanting proof operations will improve to the IT team wondering about implementation to managers who need convincing their workdays will actually get easier.

Learn More about Automation’s Benefits

• You can also download the Extending Automation to Accounts Payable Infographic, or if your’re looking for more in-depth insight about the combined benefits of our invoice and expense solutions, download the eBook

• Get the 10 Steps to an Efficient Supplier-Invoice Process guide to find out how businesses can reimagine AP from end and hone their ability to find opportunities, improve efficiency, and be ready for change.
• Read Building a Business Case for Automation for steps to secure buy-in at your company.

1, 2. How Automation Reduces the Cost of Invoice Processing and Disbursements, Institute of Finance & Management, 2023.

3. Empower the Future of Work with Intelligent Travel and Expense Solutions, a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of SAP Concur, May 2023.

4. Travel, Expense, and Supplier Invoice Management Study, Analysys Mason, 2022.