Procure-To-Pay Processing Accounts Payable Processing

Most of these software solutions automate one of the steps of the procure-to-pay process or the accounts payable process. However, the leading edge of these software are programs that automate this entire process, completely revolutionizing the role of the accounts payable department. For example, rather than spending employee time discovering the bill payment preferences of vendors, you can depend on the large supplier network of AvidXchange and not have to worry about the preferences of suppliers yourself.

Throughout the procure-to-pay process, the team’s job becomes verifying the work of the software. While many companies are developing in-house software to complete parts of the procure-to-pay process and the accounts payable process, developing a comprehensive program that handles all of these steps takes time and energy. Why not go to the pros? AvidXchange is a software company that has developed a suite of software that can automate this entire process. Unlike in-house software or a patchwork of different software, AvidXchange’s data will seamlessly and automatically transfer from one step of the process to the next. When it comes to investing in software that will iron out the creases of the accounts payable process and facilitate good supplier relationships, AvidXchange is a great choice.

Procure-To-Pay Process Steps

When considering the difference automating the procurement process could make for your company, it is important to work through the different procure-to-pay process steps one by one and think about the bottlenecks that human error can cause in these steps. AvidXchange’s procure-to-pay process software was designed to open up these bottlenecks, making the procure-to-pay process flow smoother and quicker. The first step in the procure-to-pay process (or p2p process) is supply management. First your company has to decide which products it needs, and to contact a variety of vendors for those products. Next, your team will need to make a vendor selection based on the offers the vendor can make you on products and on your company’s interest in facilitating a relationship with this supplier. Requisition comes next, the formalized process of getting approval from your company to purchase products from the vendor you selected.

Finally, after a decent amount of work on your part, it is time to create a purchase order. After receiving the physical shipment, there is a lot of clerical work that you need to do to enter the accepted order into inventory, tracking and accounting systems. After the shipment has been officially received by your company, you move on to determining whether your supplier sent you exactly the order you requested. This is done during invoice reconciliation, when the accounts payable department examines the invoice against a copy of the purchase order to make sure the shipment is accurate. Finally, in the accounts payable step, your team will determine the payment you owe to the supplier, send payment, and enter the payment sent into the accounting system. Throughout this system, there are steps that require collaboration between different company departments, which are generally places where corporate processes are hung up. There are also areas where many individuals have to review and approve data, which can also hang up processes.

P2P Process In Accounts Payable

Within the procure-to-pay process outlined above, one of the trickiest and most technical steps is the accounts payable step. There are many opportunities for a process slowdown during the P2P process in accounts payable. This is because the process of receiving invoices has a lot of potential for human error and because the process of approving payments requires collaboration between departments. The procure-to-pay process becomes harder to manage for companies that do not use software to automate some steps. You could be spending more time than necessary on repetitive tasks that can be automated using software.

Invoice processing can slow down your procure-to-pay process without using the right software. Invoices from different vendors may come in different formats, and some will come through the mail as a paper copy. Even if you are using software to help you approve invoices, you could still spend too much time on data entry and coding at the beginning of the invoice approval process. This can slow down your procure-to-pay process as well. Fortunately, AvidXchange can help with these tasks using software for automation. Through optical character recognition (OCR) technology, AvidXchange has helped to take the human error out of digitizing invoices, and streamlined communication during the P2P cycle with a comprehensive approval software and centralized accounts payable dashboard.

Procure-To-Pay Best Practices

Whether or not your company is using software to improve your procure-to-pay process, there are certain procure-to-pay best practices that you can follow in order to ensure that your process runs smoothly. As you begin to think about streamlining your company’s process, it is important to consider exactly what you want to maximize by improving this process. Are you hoping to minimize the number of team members required to complete the procure-to-pay process, are you hoping to improve your company relationships with vendors, or are you simply interested in speeding up the process in any way possible? All of these goals require their own time and attention, but some best practices remain the same across goals. One best practice is to create a procurement process flow diagram because this can help you determine where in the process your team is falling short. For example, if you are looking at making your procure-to-pay process as fast as possible, you may want to create a procure-to-pay process flow diagram detailing all of the steps in the procure-to-pay process. Then, you could determine how long each of these steps takes. It is helpful to know how long the requisition process takes versus how long your invoice approval and bill payment process takes. If you understand how quickly you can complete each step in the procure-to-pay process, then you can understand where you have room for improvement.

Source-To-Pay Vs Procure-To-Pay

One of the other steps that is slowing down many companies during the procure-to-pay processes is supply management. As mentioned above, the supply management process encompasses understanding which products are needed and finding vendors who will be able to provide those products. Finding vendors can be an incredibly time consuming process, which is why some companies are labeling their procure-to-pay process a “purchase-to-pay process” or a “source-to-pay process,” emphasizing the importance of the sourcing step. The question of source-to-pay versus procure-to-pay is a complicated one, because most of the time this process includes sourcing, even if it isn’t part of the title. The bottom line? A source-to-pay process flow chart will look very similar to a process-to-pay flowchart. To enable your purchasing department to work well with your accounts payable team, you should consider the benefits of procure-to-pay software.

The procure-to-pay process begins with the requisition of goods and services, but then it’s the responsibility of the accounts payable department to ultimately pay for goods and services. Using invoicing software can help your procure-to-pay process become more efficient by improving the visibility into your accounts payable process. You may reduce friction in communication by tracking purchase orders and invoices on a digital platform. When your accounts payable team is efficiently approving invoices for bill payment, then your procure-to-pay process can continue to function smoothly.

Source-To-Pay Process

Using source-to-pay software can help your workflow for your source-to-pay process. There can be a bottleneck in the source-to-pay process if the hand-off between the purchasing department and the accounts payable team goes poorly. Ideally, you can combine purchase order software with invoicing software to prevent a bottleneck. Use software to reduce errors in your process such as unapproved purchase orders or coding errors. You can gain control of your source-to-pay process and manage your purchases using source-to-pay software.

Once you have received an invoice for your purchase, AvidXchange can step in to help with the invoicing process. Using OCR software to transform written invoices into data, AvidXchange can automatically code invoices and start the invoice approval process to streamline the invoice processing. This means that after the invoices are scanned, the most important roles for the accounts payable team are approving the scanned invoices, invoice reconciliation reports, and payments. Integrated into this system are many of the source-to-pay best practices that were mentioned above. Understanding your procure-to-pay process can help your accounts payable team work more efficiently. The source-to-pay process can look different for different companies, but AvidXchange has software solutions that can make the source-to-pay process steps easier for your team.

More About Procure To Pay Processing Accounts Payable Processing

In today’s society, businesses and consumers alike are becoming more and more technologically savvy, and because of this, many businesses are finding themselves in need of newer and more advanced procure-to-pay and accounts payable processes. Oftentimes these processes can be incredibly intricate and difficult to manage manually. But with the evolution of technology and the rise of software as a service (SaaS) businesses, there are several different procure-to-pay or accounts payable automation software solutions available on the market today, such as Oracle procure-to-pay process flow or AvidXchange’s accounts payable automation software.

When looking for a procure-to-pay process example to utilize as a basis for your own process, it can be a good idea to find a software solution that makes managing your processes easy and reduces the amount of manual work that your P2P and AP teams need to do to stay on top of purchase orders, invoices, and payments. An accounts payable automation system like AvidXchange can help your business automate your entire AP process and eliminate the need for hard copies of invoices and payment receipts. This can help lower the cost of your AP process dramatically as well as increase the efficiency of your AP team by allowing them to easily track and edit your AP information without needing to track down their coworkers or sift through filing cabinets to find the right information.

Additionally, a software solution like AvidXchange can help you keep better track of your AP information with improved visibility and control and better prepare your current AP team for a larger workload as you continue to grow as a business. Within AvidXchange’s full suite of AP process solutions is AvidPay, which allows you to not only make more secure electronic payments but also enhance your relationships with your suppliers by paying them quickly, accurately, and in their preferred method of payment. This, paired with the other tools that AvidXchange offers, can help you create lasting and effective processes that keep your business in the good graces of your suppliers and keep you ahead of your competition with an easy-to-use and effective P2P and AP system.

Procure-To Pay Process

No matter what industry you are in, from manufacturing to food service, you most likely need to procure at least some supplies or services from an outside source, such as another company. Because of this, many businesses have a set of procure-to-pay process steps in place to follow anytime they need to get products or services from a supplier. In a given procure-to-pay example process, there are often at least seven steps that a business goes through before the transaction with the supplier is complete. Because the P2P process can be very different from one company to another, there can be more steps added to this process than just these seven, but most companies will include at least the following seven steps. These steps are supply management, vendor selection, requisition, purchase order, receiving, invoice reconciliation, and accounts payable.

Imagine needing to handle all seven of these steps (and maybe even more) manually for each supplier that your company does business with. That can take away much of your P2P and AP teams’ valuable time, and it can also be more difficult to ensure that your company is utilizing procure-to-pay best practices when you are handling all of these steps manually. This is why so many businesses are utilizing an automated software system like AvidXchange to help not only expedite the process but also make it more accurate and efficient.

Accounts Payable Process Steps

When it comes to streamlining and optimizing your accounts payable process, you will likely want to take a closer look at your accounts payable process steps and workflows to see where things are going smoothly and where things could use improvement. It can be a good idea to become familiar with an accounts payable procedures manual to ensure that you understand what procedures you should be doing and where you may need to alter your process to be more efficient. If you are unsure where to get a manual like this, you can do a web search for a sample accounts payable policy and procedures manual and there are likely to be several results that you can reference.

Of course, an effective accounts payable process may be different for you than it would be for another company because each company has its own procedures and processes that may work differently with different AP processes. Regardless, you will want to ensure that the AP process you are using is helping you utilize best practices in accounts payable process solutions. An automated software solution like AvidXchange can be very helpful in this respect because it can help you codify best practices in your AP processes and ensure that you are following them.

SAP Procure To Pay Process

Utilizing a procure-to-pay cycle in SAP can help you more effectively manage your P2P processes. This is especially effective when you pair your procure-to-pay cycle in SAP with accounting entries with AvidXchange’s software solutions. AvidXchange’s AvidPay integrates with Concur Invoice so that you can still easily utilize the P2P process in SAP with Tcodes while also getting the tremendous benefits of using AvidPay’s 100 percent electronic payment software and network of over 825,000 suppliers.

Using AvidXchange’s software solutions alongside your procure-to-pay cycle in SAP with Tcodes can help not only improve your procure-to-pay process steps in SAP but in AvidXchange’s platform as well. This can allow you to more easily make important decisions about which areas of your procure-to-pay process flow chart in SAP are performing effectively and which areas should be given some additional attention to improve your overall P2P process. Businesses that utilize the P2P process in SAP accounting entries can leverage the automation software solutions that AvidXchange provides to more effectively and efficiently streamline and optimize their P2P and accounts payable processes and more easily process large volumes of invoices both quickly and efficiently. Paired together, SAP Concur and AvidXchange can help your business eliminate risk-prone and inefficient payment processes and more accurately and efficiently pay your suppliers.

Accounts Payable End-To End Process

Like any process that contains several steps, an accounts payable process can be quite difficult to manage completely manually. This is especially true if you need to manage this process for multiple different suppliers. Because of this, there are several accounts payable automation software solutions, such as AvidXchange, on the market today. Handling the accounts payable end to end process in SAP or AvidXchange is many times easier than trying to process the entire set of steps manually for every single purchase order and payment receipt.

For this reason, many businesses have found great improvements in their AP processes and the efficiency of their AP teams when they implement an accounts payable software solution like AvidXchange. A solution like this can offer your AP team the tools and features they need to effectively manage and control your AP information and save valuable time by automating many of the monotonous, manual processes. Additionally, utilizing a software solution is much more efficient than spending hours pouring over an accounts payable procedures manual and implementing drastic changes to your AP processes by hand over a long period of time.

Accounts Payable End-To End Process Flow

Managing and improving your accounts payable processes can be a daunting task—after all, if you have been using the same processes or software solutions for a long time, it can be intimidating to bring on a new solution and have to dramatically change your current processes. But the truth is, as technology continues to advance and business processes like accounts payable get more complex, it may be necessary to implement a new software solution that can scale with you. Luckily, AvidXchange can do just that, and it is easier than you would think.

AvidXchange has over 225 integrations with widely used accounting solutions, such as SAP Concur and QuickBooks, so that you do not have to completely start from scratch when you implement AvidXchange’s software solutions. For example, if you are using SAP Concur and have been utilizing a SAP procure-to-pay process flow diagram as your main way of checking in on your P2P process, you do not have to stop doing that when you bring on AvidXchange, because it integrates seamlessly with SAP Concur. This way, you can get all of the tools and features that AvidXchange provides to help you scale your business and optimize your accounts payable process without needing to get rid of the accounts payable process flow chart that you have been using and are comfortable with.

What Is P2P Cycle

As some of the many cycles and processes that come with paying suppliers, it is important to know what the procure-to-pay and accounts payable cycles are. The accounts payable cycle is essentially the processes and workflows that make up your accounts payable process. When it comes to how to explain P2P cycle processes, the answer is pretty similar. The procure-to-pay cycle is the processes and steps that it takes to procure goods and services from other businesses (oftentimes referred to as suppliers).

The P2P cycle usually consists of researching the market, requesting goods or services, acquiring those goods and services, managing them, and making payments for them. To help your business more efficiently manage both your P2P and your AP processes, an automated software solution, such as AvidXchange’s accounts payable automation software, can be a great choice. Automated software can help you streamline and automate many of the time-consuming manual processes of both of these important processes and give your teams the time to focus their attention on more value-added tasks, rather than spending their time inputting data.