Receiving accounts payable invoices from suppliers can be challenging for the AP Department. Invoices are sent by suppliers in many formats including paper via postal mail, email with an invoice image attached, as an eInvoice where only electronic data is transmitted or worst case where the AP department needs to log onto the suppliers site to download an invoice. To further complicate matters is some invoices come directly to the AP Department whereas others can be sent directly to approvers where the Accounts Payable department loses all visibility of the invoices existence. All AP Departments who have not automated have similar challenges when it comes to variety of formats invoices are sent and also but the entry point of contact person receiving the initial invoice into your company.
Best practice for AP Departments for paper invoices is to convert received invoices to an electronic image format as time of receipt rather than on the back end after the invoice has been processed. Having invoices as images at point of entry solves the challenge of lost invoices, provides complete visibility of the invoice through the entire approval process and provides for automating the routing and processing of the invoice.
There are several options AP Departments consider to automate the receiving of invoices from suppliers.
- Scan invoices upon initial receipt using internal resources either in the AP Department or mailroom
- Outsource the receiving of the paper invoices to a third party provider to scan
- Convert suppliers to email invocie images
- Convert suppliers to submit invoices electronically