How much does it cost your company to handle an AP invoice?
Does this example sound familiar:
- Invoice comes in through the mail
- Invoice gets opened by receptionist
- Invoice gets sent to AP department
- Invoice is coded by AP department
- Invoice is sent to manager for approval
- AP department tracks down manager for reminder
- Manager reviews and approves invoice
- Invoice is sent back to AP for entry into Accpac
- Invoice is entered into Accpac by AP department
There are a number of different costs that go into processing an invoice. To get just one invoice entered into your accounting system, it is often “touched” by at least three people in your organization. The receptionist, payables clerk, and one or more managers may all review and discuss the invoice before it is approved for payment and gets entered into the system. This may add up to approximately ten minutes of labor per invoice. Using average salary estimates for each position, the cost to process each invoice typically falls between $2.00 and $3.00.
There are also costs related to photocopies, faxes, postage and courier delivery as invoices get sent around to remote offices for approval and then are eventually filed away internally in filing rooms or cabinets if the space is available. The cost of this space can easily be calculated by totaling up the square footage assigned to storage. If the desired storage space is not available internally, some companies may contract an external document storage facility which also adds to the final cost of dealing with each invoice.
A document management system can reduce many of these costs and make a number of them go away entirely. We invite you to take just three minutes of your time to use the V1 Document Management ROI calculator to plug in the numbers for your organization. Once your values are plugged in the calculator will show you just how much you could save by automating your paper-based delivery, storage, retrieval, and approval processes with an automated document management system.
Please feel free to share your comments and even your ROI results!
