Invoices often create a flurry of correspondence with vendors and employees, all of which must be kept on hand for several years, whether in paper, email or electronic document format.
By now, most people know that streamlining the accounts payable (AP) process enables your staff to be more productive while minimizing the chance of late and duplicate payments.
Similarly, most vendors are beginning to send invoices electronically, so there is now another opportunity streamline AP workflow and electronic invoice capture, which does not require scanning paper.
Email automation and management technologies can help streamline historical search and access as your records will undoubtedly be more complete in the event of customer inquiry, management scrutiny, an audit, or lawsuit.
The Top 5 AP Challenges for Managing Correspondence
How much time and productivity could be saved if email and attachments were stored alongside related invoices, POs and contracts in a secure, central location? Integrated correspondence management would streamline the invoice approval process, enhance customer service and provide peace of mind for management. Here are the top 5 challenges:
- 90% of all invoice related correspondence is conducted via email
- Capturing the emails associated with accounts payable and as they should be considered a business record
- Associating and searching correspondence along with the documents they reference – e.g., querying for all email associated with invoice #12345
- Classification, filing and archiving email with current technologies is unorganized and time consuming
- Availability for integrated solutions to make these tasks easier and faster
Integrated Correspondence Management
The right email management and automation technologies simplify capture, processing, review and approval of AP documentation. Benefits include context to email messages, central search ability, reduced processing time, increased business continuity, discovery and more. Email Manager from CMA achieves all of the above as a new type of email management that we call “integrated correspondence management.”
What are you doing within your firm to help accounts payable integrate, track and archive all of their email and attachments?