Optimize your creditor workflow – how to do it

Financial accounting has long been digitized too. Are you looking to optimize processes in your company, specifically to accelerate your workflow for dealing with accounts payable invoices? This is perfectly feasible digitally, and the good thing is: everything is done automatically. This saves a lot of time and money.

This is what a creditor workflow is

Companies regularly purchase external products and services. The suppliers here are the creditors. They invoice the recipient company for their services. These accounts payable invoices follow a certain procedure from when they are received by post to when they are entered, and this is known as the accounts payable workflow.

Improve your processes

A paper-based invoice has to be processed manually. Once it has been recorded, it has to be forwarded to whoever is responsible in-house, who then checks, accounts for, enters and approves the amount shown. But this type of workflow is a long-winded process, it isn’t secure when dealing with confidential data, and is potentially susceptible to error.

The solution for optimizing these processes and making them more efficient is digital process automation. This will reduce admin costs by about 60 percent, and will give you more time to focus on other tasks.

More benefits of a digital accounts payable workflow:

• More sustainability: You save on paper seeing as you don’t have to copy a paper slip countless times for approval, and you save on space as everything’s in one place in the form of a single piece of software – meaning no more file folders.
• A lower rate of error: Errors that would otherwise crop up frequently with manual processing are kept to a minimum
• Data security: Your accounts payable data will always be up to date, increasing data security because only authorized individuals can view the document
• Process transparency: Seeing as all processes are displayed digitally, this allows you check where something has gone wrong if a process has not yet been approved
• Independence: You can approve invoices on your tablet or laptop any time, any place

How to automate accounts payable accounting

Receive your invoices electronically only. Doing so will lay the foundations for automated accounts payable accounting. This involves three steps:

1. Set up e-bill
2. Check which suppliers also use e-bill
3. Connect to your suppliers

In the The link will open in a new window eDirectory, you’ll find a comprehensive list of business partners domiciled in Switzerland who send and receive e-bills.

Here are the options available to you for connecting to the PostFinance system

• Integrated e-solution: You can integrate the e-bill into your accounting software and import the data into your system via an interface
• eInvoicing portal: Here you can send, receive and manage your invoices electronically and independently
• eBill: If you do not use any software and only receive a few invoices electronically, you can use eBill and approve receivables in e-banking itself

How important is the account payable workflow?

Optimized, digitized workflows reduce turnaround times, and the money reaches your business partners faster, which in turn helps build a strong rapport. Because processes are displayed so transparently, they can be checked anywhere with ease. This all just goes to show that it is well worth digitizing your processes.