When is it time to automate my administration?

A growing business also means growing administration. Perhaps someone has already been hired for administration but the document flows continue to increase. You are thinking about automating your processes using software. When automating processes, an important requirement is that the processes have a repetitive nature. Therefore, it is an obvious choice to start by automating your administrative processes. To determine when it is high time for you to start automating administration, consider the following:

 

Time, money and effort

Let’s take the booking and processing of purchase invoices as an example. This is a process that can literally and figuratively get pretty expensive. Purchase invoices are manually entered into the accounting system after which they are often sent through the building in physical form for approval. As a result, digital invoices must also be printed out to go through this same process. Documents end up on the desk of the busy business owner or project manager and disappear into oblivion. Suppliers, meanwhile, become impatient and ask about the payment of their invoices. The employees in the administration search for the missing documents, request a copy from the supplier, and then rush the invoice.

This is obviously not very convenient and often leads to frustration for both employee and supplier. All irritations aside, these actions are obviously also costly. Booking purchase invoices involves many repetitive actions and research shows that the manual processing can amount to up to 12 euros per invoice (excluding payment discounts).

 

Payment discounts

Besides the costs that must be incurred to process purchase invoices, you can also think about the discount you lose if invoices are not paid on time. Many suppliers agree on payment discounts when invoices are paid by a set deadline. By automating the processing and approval of purchase invoices, the process is many times faster and therefore better agreements can be made with suppliers.

 

Complexity and numbers

Using the number of invoices as a calculation factor, the more complex your invoices are, the faster it pays to automate the process. For example, if your invoices are mostly single-line invoices, you will have to process about 1,000 of them per year to earn back the investment (we already calculated that for you).

Manual entry of invoices can lead to human error with all its financial consequences. Automation using OCR technology results in correct invoice recognition of about 90%. For UBL invoices this percentage is even 100%. In addition, the software can be tuned once to further optimize recognition, for example by using a template. In this way, the invoice can also be automatically split up into several booking lines.

 

Working from home and paperless office

Working from home is becoming increasingly popular and seems to have entrenched itself as a permanent condition of employment in business processes. A digital archive gives employees insight into the status of invoices, and booking and approval can easily be done from any location. Thus, even in special circumstances, the processes are not delayed. In addition, with a digital archive, you also save on your precious square footage and contribute a little to the environment again.

 

Want to know more about automating your administration processes?

All solutions to automate your administration can be found here. Feel free to contact us for more information or schedule a demo right away!