As streamlined operations become more and more pivotal to keeping your business above water, the role of accounts payable (AP) departments has become more critical than ever.
AP teams have an ever-growing list of responsibilities, like managing cash flows, ensuring timely payments, maintaining vendor relationships, and many more.
To manage all of these tasks effectively, many companies have turned to AP automation solutions to help their teams recover and stay afloat. But automating your AP department is just the beginning for improving efficiency.
For true optimization, document management is a vital element that cannot be overlooked.
Let's explore why integrated document management is essential for maximizing the potential of your AP automation solution, and define the key features to consider when selecting a platform that fits your needs.
The Importance of Document Management in AP Automation
Document management is an essential aspect of the modern accounts payable tech stack, but it’s one that's often neglected.
In many AP solutions, the benefits of automated data capture, invoice matching, and approval routing are undermined by an inability to retain and access other records when needed. Here are some of the ways that integrated document management can help you unlock the full potential of your AP software.
Easy Audit Prep
A document management solution offers the primary benefit of aiding businesses in audit preparation. It ensures that detailed records of financial transactions, such as invoices, receipts, and purchase orders, are easily accessible and well-organized.
Using an AP solution with integrated document management allows you to store payment records in dedicated cabinets. This grants your team convenient access to their files and allows them to effortlessly locate relevant documents in other cabinets using full-text search and advanced filtering.
By taking the chaos out of audit season, you set your financial operations up for ongoing success while offering your teams more time, more peace of mind, and more confidence in knowing that their audit will be painless.
Improve Vendor Relationships
To keep your vendors happy, it’s crucial to communicate promptly and have convenient access to supporting documents.
AP solutions that include document management streamline your ability to access invoices, purchase orders, contracts, and other pertinent information, making it faster and easier to provide your suppliers with the information they need.
Using a document management solution also helps maintain a clear record of invoice processing, which prevents disputes and allows for quick resolutions should any questions arise.
By consistently demonstrating transparent and reliable business practices, you can save time and establish long-term trust with vendors. This positive relationship allows for more effective problem-solving, improved collaboration, and better contract negotiations–all of which help you save your business money.
Collect Data with Ease and Accuracy
Many businesses still rely on manual forms for various processes such as expense reports, purchase requisitions, and more.
However, those who use AP automation platforms with integrated document management can create, manage, and store electronic versions of these forms in a centralized location.
This allows you to simplify the process of creating, approving, and tracking forms, minimizing errors and saving your team valuable time that would otherwise be spent resolving issues.
Features of an Ideal Document Management Solution for Your AP Team
While some AP automation solutions offer a degree of document management for AP-specific records, the ideal solution takes this a step further by providing businesses with an all-in-one platform, so you don’t need to piece together multiple solutions to manage your financial records and documents.
Here are some of the key features to look out for when selecting your ideal integrated document management and AP solution.
Advanced Searching
Full-text searching and filtering are features that most would expect from an AP solution, but this isn’t always the case.
When solutions lack these searching capabilities, it makes finding records like invoices, purchase orders, and shipping receipts frustrating and time-consuming, even if the documents are housed digitally.
An ideal document management solution for AP teams will allow anyone to search by the contents of a document to find it easily. You shouldn’t have to waste your time combing through files in search of a PO because you didn't memorize the number.
Configurable Indexing
As you know, the nuances of the AP process differ from one company to the next. That includes naming conventions.
If you have indexing parameters and criteria that are unique to your industry or specific to your ERP system, you shouldn’t have to worry about retraining your team to adapt to the specific way that your AP automation software wants you to index records.
Highly configurable indexing parameters in an AP solution with document management allow businesses to match any organizational systems they currently use, including industry-specific terms and departments.
Advanced Security and Compliance Measures
Many of the records that move through your AP department contain sensitive data like banking information. When it comes to selecting the right document management solution to serve your AP department, you need to make sure you select one that can keep your records safe and your business compliant.
Top-tier AP solutions with integrated document management offer configurable document retention periods, automatically removing files that your business no longer needs to store. This helps mitigate your risk of fraud by reducing the volume of vulnerable, sensitive files housed in your document storage system.
Role-based permissions also secure your records from unwarranted access or changes. An ideal document management platform will allow you to dictate who has access to records on a department and individual level.
Conclusion
In today's fast-paced business world, efficiency and accuracy are critical to success. While AP automation solutions can help businesses achieve these goals, their success is limited in the absence of document management.
DocuPhase's fully integrated AP automation and document management solution helps businesses maximize their potential by providing them with the tools they need to manage all types of documents and records in one place.
If your business is looking to take the next step in AP automation, schedule a call with a DocuPhase automation expert. Our solution includes a built-in, best-in-class document management platform with configurable retention periods, full-text search, configurable indexing, and more features to help you simplify and secure your AP department's back-office operations.
