As a small business owner, you should focus not only on growth but also on efficiency. Even with limited resources, one area where you can achieve this goal is by automating your accounts payable process.
Accounts payable can be an administrative burden for many small business owners, it takes them away from their core operations and can even impact on time spent with family. However, it’s an important task that cannot be completed quickly since mistakes may have unpleasant consequences, for example, you could upset a key supplier which might lead to increased prices or tighter credit terms.
The good news is that there are a number of affordable solutions that can help you to manage your accounts payable process in an effective and efficient way.
If you use Xero you can take advantage of their inbuilt solution, HubDoc which comes bundled with your Standard or Premium subscription. HubDoc is an app connected to Xero that uses machine learning and data analytics to read invoices and then automatically populate a bill in Xero with relevant information about supplier name, order number or date/time of purchase. This makes the process simple as well as fast – transactions are often processed within seconds after an invoice has been approved. There are other solutions out there too like DEXT, Lightyear and EzzyBills that all perform a similar function, but have slightly different feature sets.
The key benefits of using tools like these to automate your accounts payable are:
– You can take care of your transactions quickly and efficiently. By speeding up the process you will free up more time to spend with family or on other important tasks within your business.
– Invoices are processed by machines which reduces the risk of errors occurring. The majority of information that needs to be inputted into Xero has been read from the invoice itself and by automatically extracting the data you will dramatically reduce the chance of a manual keying error.
– With all invoices successfully scanned and approved by machine learning algorithms, it’s much easier to detect fraudulent activity while also protecting against honest mistakes which happen from time to time.
Automating your accounts payable process might not sound sexy, but it can free up time, increase your productivity and lead to a reduction in processing errors which could potentially harm the health of your business. I believe that it’s important for all small businesses to take advantage of these tools where possible because they can make a real difference over the long term and add value to your business.
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