• FREE RESOURCES
        • Accounts Payable
          Finally! The trick to securing greater T&E compliance
          Benefits
          Rooting out folks who don’t belong on your health plan: A 6-point dependent audit checklist
          IT
          3 costly misconceptions about biz email compromise
          Credit and Collections
          Collecting via email: 4 must-make moves in your subject line
          Accounts Payable
          5 Tough-to-spot signs that an invoice is fake
  • PREMIUM CONTENT
        • Staff management
          120 Proven Communications Tips for Today’s CFO
        • Payroll
          Handling Nonexempt Employee Pay: Stay Compliant and Avoid DOL Audits
          Accounts Payable
          T&E Best Practices: Complete Guide to Ensure Compliance
          Payroll
          Payroll Best Practices: 4 Ways to Save Time and Money
        • Staff management
          Email Best Practices: A 6-Question Quiz
          Staff management
          Innovative Communications Strategies: An Email Case Study
          Staff management
          A 5-part Framework for Successful Workplace Communications
        • SEE MORE
          PREMIUM RESOURCES
  • CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES
  • LOGIN
  • SIGN UP FREE

CFO Daily News

  • FREE RESOURCES
        • Accounts Payable
          Finally! The trick to securing greater T&E compliance
          Benefits
          Rooting out folks who don’t belong on your health plan: A 6-point dependent audit checklist
          IT
          3 costly misconceptions about biz email compromise
          Credit and Collections
          Collecting via email: 4 must-make moves in your subject line
          Accounts Payable
          5 Tough-to-spot signs that an invoice is fake
  • PREMIUM CONTENT
        • Staff management
          120 Proven Communications Tips for Today’s CFO
        • Payroll
          Handling Nonexempt Employee Pay: Stay Compliant and Avoid DOL Audits
          Accounts Payable
          T&E Best Practices: Complete Guide to Ensure Compliance
          Payroll
          Payroll Best Practices: 4 Ways to Save Time and Money
        • Staff management
          Email Best Practices: A 6-Question Quiz
          Staff management
          Innovative Communications Strategies: An Email Case Study
          Staff management
          A 5-part Framework for Successful Workplace Communications
        • SEE MORE
          PREMIUM RESOURCES
  • CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES
  • Accounts Payable
  • Credit and Collections
  • Payroll
  • Accounting
  • Benefits
  • Finance Technology
  • More
    • Employment Law
    • Strategy
    • Policy and Culture
    • Fraud
    • Payments and Transactions
    • Budgeting and Forecasting
    • Banking
    • Staff Management
    • Cost Control
    • Supply Chain
    • IT

The 5 best accounting tools for improving your payment workflow

Jennifer Azara
by Jennifer Azara
August 16, 2018
  • Accounting
  • Accounts Payable
4 minute read
  • SHARE ON

 

There’s no shortage of tools that can help your Accounts Payable department improve its efficiency, but how do you tell which ones are worthwhile? In this guest post, Ralph Perdomo, a research analyst and writer at Nvoicepay, does all the work for finance pros. 


Many organizations may be unable to “go all in” with AP automation. Either it’s pricing that keeps them at a distance, outdated infrastructure, or just plain old unwillingness to change (if it ain’t broke, why fix it, after all).

Which is fine.

But, there are still ways to reap the benefits of an improved accounts payable workflow without going all in with automation. On a hamburger budget, you can enjoy the steak dinner of automation—even if it’s à la carte.

These are some of the accounting tools that’ll get you to a better way of doing things—a better payment workflow in AP.

Supplier portals

Many organizations like HP, IBM, and Google—any Fortune 500 organization, really—use vendor portals for both invoice submission and payment status inquiry.

Thanks to the downstream nature of technology, what was once the domain for large organizations, is now accessible to organizations of all sizes.

Supplier portals free accounts payable clerks from performing the more distracting tasks such as answering payment inquiry calls by allowing them to focus on their primary duty—paying suppliers on time.

Best of all, supplier portals are the gateway to document management, which is the first step to going paperless.

External check printing

Try as you might, you can never escape the paper check—as is the case when issuing one-offs or paying smaller suppliers’ invoices.

External check printing and mailing services have emerged as an electronic-friendly alternative to conventional paper checks. This tool is helpful for organizations that want to automate part of their payments process while still providing the touch of paper checks.

And when paired with APIs (as many of the higher-end external printing/mailing services offer) accountants need not leave their accounting platform—ever. Issuing and sending payment from a checking account is as simple as clicking a button.

T&E services

Payables performs a delicate balancing act when processing employee’s T&Es. Accountants, here, must keep an ever-watchful eye for fraud and malintent, all the while processing reimbursements for their peers’ business expenses. These competing priorities can prove a challenge even for the most experienced professional accountant.

Unsurprising, then, third-party T&E services have emerged within the past few years to address this pain—Expensify and Concur come to mind.

Organizations outsource the specifics of T&E, allowing payables to focus less on the “internal customer” and more on the “external” one; certainly making for a more palatable watercooler conversation.

Sharing data

Although not necessarily “just one tool,” the sharing of data across departments provides a whole toolbox of resources for accountants throughout an organization.

When non-siloed data (siloing is the term used to describe data that’s stuck in one application or organizational department) is shared, analytics and intelligence are used to make better decisions about business finances. For example, purchasing and procurement can use unobstructed data from payables to better negotiate rates from future suppliers. How? With the intelligence gleaned from knowing which suppliers already accept lowered invoice rates in exchange for faster payment. Purchasing and procurement can then work deals with this past payment behavior.

The only limitation in sharing data is a business analyst’s imagination.

Paperless

But the very best tool to improving any workflow in AP may very well be no tool at all.

By ditching paper—going paperless—AP gains time, a more secure process, and best of all, rebates.

Eliminating the need to transpose paper invoices into an accounting system saves countless hours and removes the risk of error in the transcription process. And since there’s no need for accountants to walk around the office, securing payment authorization is an almost immediate process.

What’s more, this efficient paperless workflow gives organizations the leverage needed to request invoice discounts in exchange for faster online payment. That’s why going paperless is the domain for rebates.

So how much will you have off the automation menu? An appetizer or the four-course meal of automation? Whatever you order, it’ll taste great!

Ralph Perdomo is a research analyst and writer at Nvoicepay, the leader in payment automation software for the enterprise.

 

Jennifer Azara
Jennifer Azara
Jennifer, a member of the CFO Daily News staff, has covered business and finance for more than 22 years. She has written for CFOs, credit and collections professionals and accounts payable practitioners and has spoken at industry conferences on sales and use tax compliance.

Keep Up To Date with the Latest Finance News

With CFO Daily News arriving in your inbox, you will never miss critical stories on accounting, benefits, payroll & employment law strategies.

Sign up for a free CFO Daily News membership and get our newsletter!
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
CFO Daily News Logo
  • ABOUT CFO DAILY NEWS
  • ADVERTISE WITH US
  • WRITE FOR US
  • CONTACT
  • Accounting
  • Benefits
  • Payroll
  • Policy and Culture
  • Employment Law
  • Fraud
  • Finance Technology
  • Accounts Payable
  • Credit and Collections
  • Strategy
  • Payments and Transactions
  • Budgeting and Forecasting
  • Banking
  • Staff Management
  • Cost Control
  • Supply Chain
  • IT

CFO Daily News, part of the SuccessFuel Network, provides the latest Finance and employment law news for Finance professionals in the trenches of small-to-medium-sized businesses. Rather than simply regurgitating the day’s headlines, CFO Daily News delivers actionable insights, helping Finance execs understand what Finance trends mean to their business.

Privacy Policy Terms of Service
Copyright © 2021 SuccessFuel

WELCOME BACK!

Enter your username and password below to log in

Forget Your Username or Password?

Reset Password

Lost your password? Please enter your username or email address. You will receive a link to create a new password via email.

Log In

preloader