Cost savings lost by companies with inefficient accounts payable

Organisations of all sizes are missing a significant cost saving opportunity by failing to automate their accounts payable, according to the third annual Accounts Payable Benchmark Report 2014 by information management solutions provider Acumen Data.

The report finds many companies do not track how many invoices they process each month, and those without automated systems pay five times more to process fewer than 20 per cent of the invoices that a company with automated systems would churn through every month.

Organisations that do not automate their invoice processing paid $6.60 per invoice in 2013 (in salary and operational costs) compared to $1.24 paid by those with fully automated systems, and they only processed 640 invoices compared to the 3402 invoices that went through automated systems. 

Acumen Data managing director Richard Bates says automation assists a company to increase productivity of existing staff.

"While automation means that a company needs fewer accounts payable staff, the real benefit is that it frees up existing staff to do more financial investigation and add value to the organisation, and we find that is the more common outcome,” he says.

The report concludes there is “a clear demonstration of just how valuable accounts payable automation is to the bottom line of any organisation, no matter the size or scale”.

“Automation delivers an increased ability to manage fluctuations in invoice volumes and provides the basis for delivering increased productivity in line with business growth," the report says.