One Step Closer To Invoice Automation…
How can smart coding functionality take invoice automation one step further…?
Depending on your organisation, the maturity of your invoice processing is likely varied even across your own internal workflows for different invoice types.
And like many others in your shoes, your goal is to get those things as automated as possible – regardless of invoice type – and shoot for 100 per cent invoice automation. The good news is full invoice automation is an attainable goal with innovation available in e-invoicing solutions today like smart coding.
What is smart coding?
Smart coding helps customers further automate their invoice processing of non-PO invoices, going a step further towards touchless invoice handling. With smart coding, invoices that are not automated by purchase order matching, payment plans (schedule, budget or self-billing), or automatic coding templates can now be automatically coded with minimal human interaction.
Why should you care about smart coding?
Smart coding speeds up invoice processing and improves productivity.
Traditionally, non-PO invoices are automated with business rules that are very laborious to manage. Finding a correct cost allocation is typically a challenging task for employees who are not familiar with bookkeeping rules, especially when there is no purchase order to copy information from. It requires the AP clerk to spend a lot of focus on this type of invoices – researching the origination of the invoice, reaching out to others in the business to ask questions and making an educated guess as to the best place to code the invoice. All of this takes time and often delays payment of non-PO invoices.
Smart coding automates those manual steps, so employees can easily code an invoice with a click of a button to automate more of the process. The solution leverages big data to analyse historical transactions, ultimately providing a highly reliable recommendation to the user that can also be complemented with business rules. Not only does this simplify the process for the user and save time in processing the invoice, it also reduces the need for the AP department to rectify erroneous coding lines at month-end.
How does full invoice automation prepare me for the future?
Everyone is talking about machine learning and AI – and invoice automation and e-procurement are certainly areas of application for these emerging technologies. But there a couple of things you must do today to ensure you’re ready when those technologies become the new norm. Use smart coding to help you:
- Automate as much as possible: Machine learning and AI are layered over systems, so you want to be as streamlined as possible in preparation for those applications. To do this, set your goals on a high level of automation. And this doesn’t just mean adding technology over clunky processes. As you mature your systems and strategy, make sure you’re re-engineering processes where necessary so workflows are optimized too.
- Get financial data: One major benefit of full automation is the central collection of all your financial data in one solution. Data is what feeds technologies of the future. Machine learning and AI are not effective in purchase to pay without a complete, ever increasing source of financial data. If you want to embrace machine learning applications, capture every possible piece of financial data in your purchase-to-pay system today.
Basware has the most advanced invoice automation solution in the world and we’re constantly improving it. Based on 30+ years in the industry, we’re rolling out features and functionality that continue to deliver the ultimate efficiency benefit to customers. With the largest open network, we have the unique ability to capture the most data across customers and combine that with third party data to deliver what customers need now and in the future.
