What is invoice processing flow? Everything you need to know about invoice processing flow

What is invoice processing flow? The paper-based invoice payment process often hinders the productivity of business accountants. Traditionally, employees needed to manually enter data and track documents at every step of the supply finance process. Manual data entry is time-consuming and can lead to different types of errors, such as inaccurate data. However, there is a better way to Process the accounts payable process for businesses.

Today, most companies rely on automated finance solutions to eliminate manual data entry processes while ensuring consistency in workflow and invoice processing.

Whether you operate in the service sector or the manufacturing industry, accounts payable invoice management is an important part of every company. An automated and digitized solution can help your company achieve transparency and maintain on-time payment cycles. Here are some important things to know about Invoice processing and approval process that you can refer to.

Manual invoice processing flow

Every business manages its invoices differently; therefore, the invoice approval process varies from company to company. Typically, the invoice approval process includes a series of steps that a company takes when approving an invoice. Simply put, it is a system with certain internal controls to prevent payment of unauthorized or unauthorized invoices.

The internal control system begins when an invoice is received and prepares for the process of reconciling and checking the reasonableness and validity of the invoice. Most companies implement two-way and three-way matching processes to verify invoices against purchase orders, warehouse receipts, and make corresponding invoice payments. For example, details on the invoice such as quantity, price, date and other details must match the information on the purchase order and warehouse receipt.

As you can see, manually monitoring all these processes takes a lot of time. However, with an automated processing solution, you can free employees from tedious tasks and allow them to focus on tasks that bring greater value to the organization.

>> See more: Payables 2023: How does automation improve approvals? 

Invoice processing flow: Automatic invoice approval

Approving invoices through an automated process is something that will benefit your organization in the long term. Manual invoice processing methods are slow and can impact the performance of your payments accounting team.

You can make the process completely transparent by optimizing your invoice approval process with automated tools. You'll have complete visibility into your data as your supplier processes your invoices and matches the exact details from a centralized system. Here are some core components of the automated invoice approval process that you should know.

• Electronic invoices will be automatically analyzed and compared by an automated invoice processing solution
• Most invoice processing automation platforms come with two-way and three-way checking mechanisms. This mechanism speeds up invoice processing and reconciliation
• Since everything is automated, data is centralized and consistent. Users have detailed information about the accounts payable management process
• By implementing a solution that automates your payables process, you don't need to worry about fraud or errors related to invoices.
• Reduce costs and processing time
• The efficiency of the accounting team increased

Automation is the key to success

Manual invoice processing can create inefficient workflows that can seriously impact a business's bottom line. When processing invoices and managing accounts payable manually, this process takes the most time. Invoice approval can take weeks or even months.

In other words, there is always uncertainty in the manual accounts payable invoice management process. Businesses now need to compete in every department. With the invoice approval workflow in accounts payable management software, businesses can easily digitize accounting operations with quick processing time.

These new technologies and automation solutions are changing the way businesses manage and operate their processes. Businesses, in particular, are looking to invest in modern technologies to improve existing processes and to stay ahead of their competitors.

Businesses that have implemented software to automate their processes are seeing tangible changes Businesses that have implemented software to automate their processes are seeing a range of benefits, such as improved processes, reduce costs and increase performance.

To cope with the current market, applying modern technologies is indispensable for every organization. If you are still using old methods, perhaps this is the right time to buy a procurement software solution that comes with the latest features and helps you optimize your processes and stay ahead of your competitors.

>> See more: 5 steps to automate the expense approval process

Top 5 benefits when businesses automate accounts payable – Bizzi 

Bizzi – Comprehensive invoice processing solution that solves the "pain" of the accounting and finance industry

Automatically receive and store electronic invoices

Previously, processing and storing input invoices often used accountants' emails, which caused many problems for businesses such as:

• Storage systems are limited.
• Information security is not guaranteed.
• Difficulty finding and retrieving information.
• Challenge when employees leave and need to search for old invoice data again.

Bizzi solved this problem by giving each business a separate email address. Bizzi bot has been trained to automatically collect invoices and bring them into a platform for processing. Thus, the accounting department does not need to intervene manually. Electronic invoices are stored in a single place with an intuitive display list for easy management and access.

Automate invoice processing with robots

Bizzi is a groundbreaking application that provides invoice processing solutions through Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotic process automation (RPA) technology. Bizzi's platform integrates flexibly with existing accounting solutions and provides the ability to connect suppliers and customers to automate critical financial processes such as audits, reconciliations , and pay bills.

In particular, Bizzi provides each company with a separate and unique email address. Bizzi bot automatically uploads invoices to the platform for processing. After completing the check, Bizzi automatically notifies the results, helping the accounting department to simply view the displayed results and make approval decisions without having to perform complicated manual operations. This helps optimize processes and save time on invoice and financial management.

>>> See more: Goods purchase list - Bizzi launches new feature [July 2023]

Automatically intelligent 3-way comparison: Invoices - Orders - Warehouse receipts

Bizzi Vietnam has developed a smart 3-way reconciliation solution that helps automate the process of checking and reconciling invoices, orders and warehouse receipts with outstanding features:

• Smart 3-way comparison between invoices - orders - warehouse receipts with more accuracy than 99%.
• Handle all reconciliation cases on the system: 1PO – 1INV – 1GR; 1PO – nINV – nGR; nPO – 1INV – nGR; nPO – nINV – nGR
• Detect deviations quickly and improve data accuracy.
• Automatically confirm 3-way comparison of each product line accurately and push information through the customer's ERP system.
• Automatically get PO number from invoice/email from supplier/invoice file.
• Support creating invoices and comparing goods for farmers from templates.
• Automatically convert units of goods and manage goods intelligently.

Thanks to that, accountants can:

• Save time: Eliminate manual work and minimize time spent checking each document.
• Increase accuracy: Reduce the risk of errors and ensure the accuracy of audit information.
• Optimize the audit process: Focus on deeper analytical work and improve overall audit performance.

Comprehensive solution to reduce the risk of accounting errors

Processing invoices manually is not only time-consuming but also prone to causing many errors, especially risks related to tax issues. The consequences of these errors can be significant fines and costs that businesses must bear.

Bizzi solved this problem by automatically checking and validating incoming electronic invoices against various criteria to ensure their validity. This includes checking electronic signatures, tax codes, supplier information, and many other factors. This is an important step forward to help companies eliminate the risks associated with using fake invoices.

Bizzi provides a secure environment and ensures data accuracy, giving businesses peace of mind regarding legal and tax matters. Each electronic invoice is processed in just a few seconds, saving significant time and ensuring accuracy in the invoice processing process.

Extract data to transfer to accounting software

Bizzi helps businesses automate the process of receiving and storing electronic invoices quickly and effectively. Importantly, this platform also allows users to automatically extract data from invoices in accordance with each business's accounting software.

Bizzi automatically processes electronic invoices and extracts data into Excel files, completely compatible with the accounting software the company is using to support the data entry process. In addition, electronic invoices are stored on the Bizzi platform with an intuitive display list, helping the accounting department to easily search by many different criteria such as supplier, invoice date. , invoice number, tax code, and many other factors.

Bizzi's robotic process automation and machine learning technology delivers many important benefits. It helps reduce invoice processing time by up to 80% and reduce processing costs by up to 50%. At the same time, it increases transparency and compliance with tax regulations. Bizzi strongly contributes to driving digital transformation and digital adoption in the financial sector, delivering specific and measurable benefits.

Above is information about invoice processing flow. Hope they will be useful to you and your business!

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