Automated Invoice Scanning and Processing reduces cost

Studies by the Gartner Group reveal that the cost for processing a single invoice in the UK is between £4 and £25, but can reach £50, and that most companies still receive around 80% of their supplier invoices on paper.

The accumulated cost of processing paper invoices is a drain on your financial resources, while keying invoice details into your accounts system is time consuming and prone to errors.

Fortunately, recent advances in the use of OCR technology (optical character recognition) enable companies to automate invoice processing, reducing invoice processing costs and labour. 

How does it work?

As invoices arrive they are scanned into our software. The system matches each invoice to the most appropriate document template which captures the invoice data. This can include items such as:

• Supplier name, address, postcode, vat number
• Invoice number
• Invoice date
• Purchase order number
• Net Total
• Vat Total
• Invoice Total
• Line items, including product description, quantity, net, vat and line total can be captured if required.

If invoices arrive by email they can be imported into the system and processed using the same method.

A comprehensive set of business rules are be built into the system to ensure that the information extracted from each invoice is accurate.

For example:

• A check is made against a database to ensure that the system is dealing with the correct supplier. This database lookup also returns the suppliers default nominal code and tax code.

• As the invoice data is captured the Net Total and Vat Total are added together and compared against the Invoice Total. If these values match the system will allow the invoice to move onto the next part of the process. However, if the values don't match the invoice will be presented to your operator to check and correct before passing this stage of the process.

• If you have a Purchase Order database each invoice can be matched against your purchase order.

This improved way of working can deliver considerable productivity gains, allowing early payment discounts to be achieved and eliminating late payment charges, reducing invoice processing costs by up to 50% and dramatically improving efficiency.

Nominal Coding and Tax Coding line items

If you wish to capture line items from your supplier invoices (product description, quantity, net, vat and line total) you may also need to change the nominal code, tax code or department number for specific purchases. This issue is handled by our invoice and order processing module which provides the control required.

Invoice Archiving and Retrieval

If you are scanning purchase invoices it is logical to keep the digital copies of your accounts documents for archive and retrieval, removing the need store the original paper records.

We can configure your system so that a data file is created to load into your accounts package and a copy of the scanned invoice is automatically filed in your document management system.

This reduces your storage costs and makes retrieval of accounts paperwork much quicker and easier than working with paper documents.

Automated invoice scanning and processing offers the following benefits:

• Reduced data entry costs
• Single process for paper and electronic invoices
• Reduce invoice processing delays
• Improved data accuracy
• Very short-term ROI
• Reduced storage costs
• Faster access to accounting information

If you are interested in finding out more about automated invoice processing please contact us today.