What Happens When You Integrate AP Automation Across Your Finance Team

Digital transformation isn’t going anywhere, and it’s touched just about every aspect of our daily life. But one area that’s often overlooked: accounts payable (AP) automation. Today much of the work finance teams put in to pay invoices, onboard new vendors, and integrate tools across their technology stack is highly manual.

But what if it wasn’t? Integrating AP automation into the finance software you use everyday can reap huge benefits. For small and mid-sized businesses, this can realize substantial ROI within 12 months by reducing invoice and payment processing costs, improving efficiency and cash flow, and enhancing your supplier relationships.

Key Takeaways

• AP automation reduces manual invoice and payment work, freeing finance teams to focus on more strategic tasks.
• Integrating automation into your existing finance stack can cut processing costs and accelerate cash-flow visibility.
• Digital payment options unlock discounts, rebates, and stronger supplier relationships.

Are You Leaving Money on the Desk?

Invoice ingestion is likely the main driver of manual AP processes, and most still come in on paper. This means hours of work and a high probability of data entry errors. 

Speaking of paper, if you’re still paying your suppliers by check, your processing costs may be as much as 40-50% higher, compared with businesses using digital payments. Skipping digital payment methods like virtual cards means missing out on early payment discounts from suppliers and valuable cash rebates.

Benefits of AP Automation Integration: From a Cost Center to a Streamlined, Strategic Function

Here’s how automation can transform your AP processes:

1. Gain efficiency and productivity
2. Reduce fees and capture higher discounts
3. Access better cash-flow control
4. Build strong supplier relationships
5. Enhance compliance and security
6. Support scalability and flexibility
7. Gain strategic insights from analytics

1. Gain Efficiency and Productivity

Reduce the need for manual labor and free AP teams to focus on strategic tasks instead of repetitive manual processes. This reduces human error, which costs additional time. Some users report reducing their processing time by as much as 50-80%.

2. Reduce Fees and Capture Higher Discounts

Eliminate late payment fees and take advantage of early-payment discounts.  

3. Access Better Cash-Flow Control

Gain real-time visibility into payables and utilize flexible payment scheduling based on your business needs and your vendors’ preferred forms of payment. This improves cash optimization.

4. Build Strong Supplier Relationships

Build trust with suppliers and significantly reduce payment-related inquiries and disputes with faster and more transparent payment methods. 

5. Enhance Compliance and Security

Make audits easier to manage with improved reconciliation and digital audit trails. Some automation solutions are also SOC2+ and HIPAA audited to support enterprise-grade security.

6. Support Scalability and Flexibility

Scale cloud-based AP automation solutions seamlessly with your business, handle increased invoice volumes, and manage multi-entity organizational structures.

7. Gain Strategic Insights From Analytics

Support data-driven decisions and continuous improvement with dashboard visibility. View metrics like days payable outstanding, processing cost per invoice, and discount capture rates, as well as real-time visibility into liabilities and payment statuses. 

Modern automation enables you to reallocate your team’s time from low-value processing to high-value analysis by connecting AP and purchasing in one intelligent workflow. Invoice approval cycles speed up, making it easier to take advantage of early payment discounts and digital payment rebates. And you’ve strengthened your internal finance controls without slowing down your business. 

Paytronix Accelerates Finance Operations With AP Automation

AP automation sounds great, but what does it look like in practice? See how a healthcare practice was able to achieve 20% time savings by transforming its AP processes.

This fast-growing healthcare practice management company offers high-quality dental, vision, and orthodontic services for pediatric patients. Their main AP challenges included:

• An increasingly high volume of vendor invoices
• Complex financial processes as a result of multiple ERP instances
• Siloed payment information
• Highly manual AP processes create time-consuming work and errors for staff
• Unhappy vendors due to payment delays, errors caused by manual processes

After a seamless implementation with MineralTree, the company successfully launched their new end-to-end AP automation system, from invoice receipt through vendor payment powered by MineralTree TotalAP. They also implemented digital payment options, including virtual cards earning valuable cash-back rebates.

The results? More than 20% time savings for their staff accountant, and a 67% decrease in quarterly close time — from 30 to just 10 days. They also optimized cash flow visibility and simplified reporting on key financial metrics for senior management. Plus, with faster invoice approvals and more timely vendor payments, they gained access to more favorable payment terms and lower pricing. Today, the majority of all payments are automated through MineralTree.

Accelerating Your AP Processes With Modern Automation

When you tightly integrate AP automation into the finance software you use every day, it becomes a seamless part of your workflow, transforming AP from a cost center into a streamlined, strategic function. Finance teams gain additional time and cost savings and increase accuracy and visibility, all while further strengthening supplier relationships, optimizing cash flow, cost savings, and scalability. This means your business can operate with more control, speed, and confidence at a time when efficiency and cash flow visibility are critical.

To learn more about the benefits of AP automation, download our new eBook here.