Too many businesses struggle with disconnects between procurement and accounts payable functions within their organization. When someone in procurement places an order or an employee makes a maverick purchase, your finance or accounts payable (AP) team might not know about this spend until they receive an invoice, which can lead to issues such as:
To avoid these disconnects between departments, businesses can leverage procure-to-pay technology, where this whole process can be integrated into a single system. For example, using a procure-to-pay e-procurement platform, an employee could source bids for cleaning services, hire a vendor, receive invoices for these services and get the invoice processed for payment through the same system.
Keeping the whole procure-to-pay process within one integrated system can help ensure that procurement and finance/AP teams can have visibility into both purchasing and payments, and you can set up a procure-to-pay system so that you only purchase from vendors with agreeable payment terms.
For example, with GoProcure, you can easily enforce your purchasing policies so that you use properly vetted suppliers to mitigate risk. All purchases made through GoProcure must always be approved by managers, have associated purchase orders and have matching invoices generated upon completion of the purchase. That also means your AP team is never waiting on employees to send them the invoice. Instead, they receive a validated invoice for pre-approved purchases before the payments are due.
Even better, GoProcure can consolidate all spend into one invoice, where you just pay GoProcure as your master vendor, and we then distribute payments accordingly. So as long as you’re comfortable with GoProcure’s purchasing and payment terms, you don’t have to worry about dealing with multiple vendors with varying and confusing payment terms.
Since procure-to-pay technology streamlines payment processes and can automate invoice management, your AP team can spend less time handling manual payments and chasing down invoices and instead use their time in a way that adds more value to your business.
For example, AP professionals can focus on areas like spend analysis to find cost savings and improved efficiencies, such as by identifying new opportunities for sourcing, as well as bulk ordering to receive volume discounts. Plus, by having less need for manual invoice management, your organization can invest in hiring more strategic finance talent, such as those who can get involved with market analysis, rather than directing those resources toward clerical work.
So instead of getting bogged down with manual invoice management and disorganized payment processes, consider how streamlining and automating these processes can help you get more out of your finance and AP teams.
Request a free consultation with our product experts today to learn more about how leveraging procure-to-pay technology can help maximize your resources.