“Automation” has become one of those tech-jargon words that get thrown around a lot in marketing material, but whose benefit can, at times, seem limited. However, there are times when automation really does add value to an organisation, and offers meaningful benefits.

One of those areas is in bringing automation to the invoicing process. Managing invoices is a necessary part of business, of course, as it is responsible for cash flow and your access to key suppliers. However, it’s also menial, time-consuming work to do manually, and you would be better off deploying your people to higher-value tasks. The best way to do that is to embrace automation. There are several excellent options available to automate invoicing, but regardless of which solution you choose, the benefits back to the business should be pretty consistent:

## 1) It saves your people time As overviewed above, by automating the invoicing process, you can save your people a lot of time. They will no longer need to extract the data, perform data entry, and validate the data. When you consider that on average this process can save an employee 10 minutes per invoice, and 83 hours of time per year on average, you’re giving your skilled staff two week’s worth of time back, which can be used on far more valuable tasks than the low-value data input.

But there’s more to it than that! By automating data like this, you’re also not going to be waiting for someone to commit the time to record keeping. Automation happens immediately, meaning that invoices can be paid, and processed, far more quickly. Research suggests that processing time is slashed from 14 days to just three through automation, making you a better supplier and ensuring that your cashflow is better managed.

## 2) It vastly reduces the risk of human error We’ve all seen cases of data entry errors resulting in some nightmare scenarios. Headlines like “Chilean man who was accidentally paid 330 times his normal salary resigns, then vanishes” are amusing (when it doesn’t happen to our business), but represent a real ongoing issue with human-driven data entry: no matter how careful someone is to dot the “I’s” and cross the “t’s”, errors will, at times, happen, and the fallout can range from everything from having egg on the face to major costs to the business.

Automation all-but eliminates that. As long as the data in the invoice is correct, the data entry and record keeping will be 100 per cent accurate at all times. With some automation programs it is possible to “teach” them to flag aberrant data points in case a mistake has been made on the supplier or client’s end, too, which makes the manual check before paying or receiving an invoice even less at-risk of human error.

As an added bonus, automation never tires. The risk of human error increases towards the end of a week of long working day, or close to the end of the quarter or financial year when there’s always a mad scramble to get everything done. Automation continues to operate 24x7 and 365 days in a year without any drop in performance or accuracy.

3) It allows for more work to get done

There are two qualities about automation that allow it to become a productivity boost to the organisation: firstly, because it does operate 24/7 and 365 days per year, it allows invoices to be processed at any time, allowing your business to become one that suppliers and clients can interact with on their own terms. As soon as they’re ready to submit an invoice or make an order, the activity is actioned.

Secondly, automation allows your people to do their work from anywhere. Because automation is always a cloud-based solution, and because it removes the manual processes and movement of paper around the office, the people responsible for monitoring and managing the invoicing can do so while working remotely, gain any-signoffs necessary, and take any further actions necessary from your computer and an Internet connection.

## 4) It protects the business in terms of governance and compliance One of the great things about automation when it comes to invoicing is that it establishes a paper trail. Records are easy to track, history is preserved and archived, and if there has been editing or discrepancies within records, then it’s very easy to trace who did it, when, and the changes they made.

This allows for complete transparency and accountability when it comes to accounting and records, and that can protect the business in the event of an audit. Even more than that, however, is that it can save the business considerable time. Should an audit be required, the records created through the automation are stored and retrievable quickly and easily, cutting down on the time needed to create the report, and therefore saving additional money and headache.

## 5) It’s good for buyer and supplier relations As noted earlier, automation can significantly cut down on the processing time for invoicing, and that is something that is always appreciated by business partners, whether supplier or buyer. The sooner they can be done with the invoicing side of the transaction, the easier they can manage their own clash flows and move on to their own next priority.

As the great quote from Warren Buffet goes “It takes twenty years to build a reputation and five minutes to destroy it.” One of the things that can quickly harm a business’ reputation is if the payment cycles are too long. In the modern era most suppliers would prefer to be paid within a month, and most buyers would prefer to have the money taken from them within a short period of making the purchase. If the supplier feels like they need to send through invoice payment reminders, or the buyer is getting an invoice for something they barely remember paying, they’re going to have a dim view of your company, and people talk. If your competitor is known for being more reliable with invoicing, then it’s an easy matter to shift business over to them.

The more you can automate, the more you’ll be protecting your business’ reputation.

## 6) It’s a good security measure It’s much harder to forge invoices and other documents when the process is being automated. When it’s a manual process, an employee – or other individual of ill will – can relatively easily alter documents, add additional invoices to “the pile”, and otherwise scrape the proverbial cream off the top.

There was a famous example a few years ago of a Lithuanian swindler managing to get $100 million out of Google and Facebook by setting up a fake company that shared a name with a real enterprise from elsewhere in the world. Better automated systems from Facebook, Google, and the legitimate company that was being impersonated would have helped prevent this from happening. This form of fraud, called Business Email Compromise, has become enormously popular and one of the best defences against it, according to the Australian government, is to “Establish a clear and consistent business process for workers to verify and validate requests for payment and sensitive information.” That is something that automation can provide.

## 7) It gives you the opportunity to negotiate for a better rate In many cases, suppliers will be happy to offer discounts when they can be sure that they’ll be paid quickly. This is one of those quirks that, along with ordering in bulk, can really benefit a prepared company.

Being able to broach this subject with a supplier largely relies on two things: firstly, you need to be able to demonstrate that you’ve got the systems and capabilities in place to complete transactions quickly. Secondly, you need to be able to point to an unblemished history of paying quickly. In other words, the more trustworthy you are, the more you’re going to be trusted.

This is why automation is often credited with having a good ROI. You do pay upfront for the automated systems, and usually they’re delivered via a subscription service, so there is a monthly cost involved in maintaining them. However, they also directly related to cost savings across the business. From the additional hours of employee productivity, right through to the better negotiating position, automation ends up underpinning a lot of savings and an ROI that can be measured in just months, making it one of the fastest ROIs that technology can provide.

## 8) It can result in a happier workforce By the end of 2022, one in five (20 percent) of workers will quit their jobs. It’s a trend that’s being termed the “Great Resignation,” and it is a real problem for organisations. Because there are skill shortages in most areas, it can be hard to find replacements for those employees that do quit, and even if you can, it tends to be costly to recruit them, as other organisations will also be competing for their attention.

Even if you do find a replacement, you then need to go through the onboarding and, potentially, training process, which introduces inefficiencies in the workplace. Resignations cost companies, and therefore most companies are making retention a priority.

Interestingly, for many employees, improved salaries are not the incentives that will keep them in their roles. Rather, they want to see employers investing in them. This could mean skills training and career development, but it will also often mean making the work itself more engaging for the employee.

Leveraging automation to allow the employee to focus their skills on more complex, interesting, and rewarding tasks is a clear pathway to employee happiness and, therefore, the organisations’ ability to retain the staff.

Automation means a competitive advantage. It will help your business be more productive, more efficient, easier to work with, and more secure. Are there any downsides? Just one, really; it needs a change management program. Employees, though they will benefit from automation, will be concerned that automation will result in job losses, and it’s important that the organisation’s leadership drive a change management program to highlight that this isn’t the case and, in fact, the automation will be beneficial to their roles. Change management is also important in making sure that automation is actually used when deployed, and employees don’t simply revert to the “old ways” of doing things because they’re more familiar.

Invoice automation is an opportunity for enterprises of all sizes. The technology is affordable for small businesses, while the technology is robust and comprehensive enough to meet the needs of the enterprise as well. It will be one of the first forms of automation to become so commonplace as to be standardised, because it is so effective, and reliable, and the ROI is so compelling. It can also be deployed very quickly, so your business can start to benefit from it almost immediately. In short, there’s no reason to hold on getting on board with automation at the nearest opportunity.