Navigating Digital Accounts Payable Platforms: Your Ultimate Selection Guide

Accounts payable and receivable involve a complex web of activities and number-crunching. Managing all of this manually can be a daunting task. Given the criticality of managing accounts payable efficiently, businesses have begun investing in spend management software to avoid high processing costs, fraud vulnerability and errors, late payments, and frustrated vendors. These platforms empower you to address these challenges head-on by automating the complete procure-to-pay processes. 

While businesses are grappling to make spend management software a part of their culture, there is a big roadblock – picking the right solution. Every accounts payable and receivable platform promises greater efficiency, significant cost savings, and security. Navigating these platforms to choose the one that is ideal for you can be an overwhelming task.

In this article, we will look at the factors that you should consider before deciding on a platform.

Assessing Your Business Spend Management Requirements

More than 70% of financial leaders surveyed by Stampli stated that they are expecting a massive rise in supplier invoice volume. Furthermore, 55% of them also believe that the invoices are likely to become complicated. 

Once you decide to have an AP automation software to manage your accounts payable and receivable, the first step you must take is to evaluate the maturity of your organization and processes. It gives you a clear understanding of which workflows are working well and which need to be fixed. You need to know the complexity of the invoices you will get, the frequency at which you will receive them, and so on.

Post this, you must document your current spending management process. It doesn’t matter if you are already using a platform or managing accounts payable through a manual approach. Jotting down the entire flow of an invoice right from when one is received from a supplier, the key information that needs to be retrieved, how the approval process works, and how the invoice is paid. The purpose of this exercise is to learn the features you will need to eliminate the manual tasks and bottlenecks in the streamlined flow of invoices to their clearance stage.

Evaluating tools to make an informed choice

Once you know what you want, you can either invite a request for a proposal or go out into the market to evaluate the multiple options available. Then again, the complexity of your accounts payable and receivable will guide you through the process you must take. Regardless, when you are assessing different spend management software, you need to consider below factors:

Features: Run a comprehensive analysis of the features that different platforms offer and cross-check them against your requirements. You can easily discard the ones that don’t match your workflow.

Customization: The spend management process of every business is different. Therefore, most spend management software offers customization to suit your workflows. The ability to configure features or workflows is a major plus.

Cost: Although purchasing an AP automation platform is an investment, it shouldn’t force you to disturb your cash flow. Ensuring just the right balance between cost and features is critical for your business success.

Support: Your spend management software shouldn’t just be a tool, but your partner in maintaining healthy accounts payable and receivable.

Ensuring a smooth transition to your chosen platform

An AP automation platform doesn’t work as a standable system. Instead, it becomes a part of an intricately linked financial management ecosystem of your organization. To ensure a seamless transition to your new spend management software, it should enable comprehensive integration capabilities. It should be tightly integrated with your accounting software, ERP, and other financial platforms that you use.

Conclusion

An ideal spend management software facilitates seamless invoice capturing, automated payment reminders, and streamlined financial management, making the AP journey smooth. Also, your accounts payable and receivable are constantly changing, which means your platform must also be highly scalable for uninterrupted payment processing. 

Your platform must also allow you to monitor and track your invoice as it flows through different approval stages for efficiency, and to avoid delayed payments. You can easily find all of these features and more in Zaggle Zoyer. It is an AP automation software that gives you a strategic and data-driven approach to spend management.

Learn more about Zoyer here.