One of the things that can stop buying companies from scaling is not knowing how to handle high-volume accounts payable. Creating smooth and efficient processes is essential for organizations with 5,000 to over 10,000 invoices monthly, or even over 100,000 annually. Even organizations processing around 2,000 invoices per month may be considered high-volume. When you have that many invoices, it becomes obvious when there are cracks in your workflows. High-invoice-volume companies might be in the following industries: Manufacturing, Logistics & Transportation, Retail, Construction, and Healthcare.
Despite the number that makes an Accounts Payable department considered “high-volume,” there are a number of best practices that can make your AP department more efficient and able to process more invoices in a better way, even if that is something you are just anticipating in the future.
Why Can a High Volume of Invoices Cause Bottlenecks?
Accounts Payable departments may seem to be running smoothly on the surface when only a few invoices are coming through their system; however, once a higher volume starts to come in, inefficiencies or poor workflows may be revealed. In industries where invoices are complex, it may become obvious that the number of AP resources needs to increase drastically as the number of invoices coming through increases.
High volumes of invoices can cause bottlenecks due to:
- Manual data entry
- Issues with approval workflows
- Visibility issues
- Lack of standardization
- Lack of or broken integrations with other systems
- And more
However, the answer isn’t always that the organization needs to hire more people. Here are some best practices for your accounts payable department dealing with high invoice volumes.
High Volume Invoice Processing Workflows
High-volume invoice processing benefits greatly from workflows. Creating an end-to-end workflow for the invoice process is key to automation and decreasing the sheer volume of work for your resources. Without having to deal with every single “normal” invoice, your team can focus on exceptions.
Intelligent Invoice Approvals
Your invoice approval workflows are important for reducing bottlenecks. For example, your workflow process should include exceptions for when resources are out of the office to ensure that invoices don’t get stuck.
Automation in Accounts Payable
Your workflows should have the goal of accomplishing much of the invoice process touchlessly, leaving the exceptions to be dealt with by your team. Automation helps with speeding up invoice intake and approvals.
Standardization
To ensure that no bottlenecks happen, standardization is key. This includes implementing consistent data entry techniques, approval rules, and more. But standardization should happen with more than just your data entry.
Integration
Along with standardized processes, your data should appear in the right places. Ensuring that there are integrations between your core technologies is key to getting rid of bottlenecks caused by data silos.
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To learn more about how you can increase the efficiency of your invoice processes, contact ICG. ICG specializes in AP workflows that allow organizations to increase accuracy and focus on exceptions. Learn about ICG’s solutions here, or contact us.