AP Automation: How Your AP Team Can Work From Home Safely And Effectively

With the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown restricting travel to work as well as everywhere else, the requirement on businesses to have employees work from home places pressure on productivity. It is especially true for Accounts Payable departments, but AP Automation offers Cloud-based solutions in these strange times.

Of course, the COVID-19 travel and work restrictions are completely understandable; we are all happy to prioritise personal health and wellbeing over the risks travelling would otherwise present. It’s just that having a scattered accounts payable team through the crisis can hardly boost productivity.

Home or remote working is not a strange concept these days, but without the proper tools to hand, it can create its own set of challenges. Collaboration, for example, is a key element of the accounts payable process, so AP teams must have access to data and documents and the ability to share that information immediately.

Making use of an AP automation system during the COVID-19 crisis, and the Cloud technology these systems utilise will help overcome the challenges that remote working throws up. More critically, it ensures your productivity is impacted minimally while your staff adhere to restrictions, so they stay safely cocooned at home.

How Automated AP Systems Help During COVID-19 Crisis

1. Easy Access From Home

Paper invoices are digitised, uploaded and stored in one safe location, making it possible for AP team members to access on demand these documents from anywhere with a working internet service. All your team members need is to be given access authorisation, and they can continue their work from home without any hinderance during the COVID-19 crisis.

2. Automated Approvals

All payments must be given approval before they can be made, but without the specific manager to hand to approve a payment, working from home could slow the whole process down. Automated AP systems allow managers with the necessary powers of approval to stay on top of matters, with automatic notifications prompting their green light within minutes.

3. Document Checking

When it comes to the acquisition of goods, supplier invoices need to be cross-referenced with Goods Received Notes (GRNs) and Purchase Orders (POs). Without document digitisation, this can be very time-consuming. However, because automated AP systems digitise and store these documents, even when they work from home, staff can cross-reference these three important documents in seconds and reconcile them before any payments are made.

4. Secure & Fraud-Protected

The risk of fraud is a constant concern for the accounts payable department. When it comes to staff that work from home, however, there is an understandable fear that making access available from different locations might make security vulnerable to hacks. But the control features, incorporated in automated AP systems, are designed to protect against fraud and to keep data fully secure.

5. Unlimited Users

The control features can be set and reset to grant authorisation to the automated AP system to as many individuals as is necessary. It means that in these exceptional days, it is easy to allow more users than usual access, ensuring your processes can run as smoothly as possible.

To find out more about Accounts Payable Automation click here.