No sane person looks forward to audits! Audits are tedious and time-consuming—and employees and managers alike are generally terrified by the very thought of an audit.

Thanks to automation, audits don’t have to be terrifying or time-consuming. 

Digitization has removed the hassle of dealing with piles of paperwork during audits. Account payables automation simplifies the audit process and provides real-time data to help auditors test your financial records' accuracy.

The need to improve data compliance

As companies increasingly adopt digitization, fraudulent transactions now pose a significant challenge. In the US, $19 billion in fraud losses were estimated for 2018 alone. That number has gone up since then. The e-commerce sector in the US has seen a whopping 43% of fake orders. The numbers indicate how important it is to focus our efforts on data compliance to tackle digital fraud. 

Automating your accounts payables is an important step in improving invoice compliance, preventing fraud and simplifying your audit processes. 

Here's how AP automation ensures invoice data security, in addition to other benefits:

1. Real-time access to critical data: AP audits can take days if you have manual, paper-based AP processes and physical invoices. Retrieving stored files and sifting through piles of paper is tedious for both auditors and AP teams. Plus, paper can get lost, damaged or misplaced—a nightmare during any audit! AP automation frees both AP teams and auditors from the woes of paper invoices. It speeds up audit processes, makes data accessible instantly, improves searchability and makes it easy to verify and process large batches of invoices at a time.

2. Tracking invoice processing and changes: AP automation makes it easy for you to track how an invoice was processed. Changes made by any team members are visible on a centralized platform. Auditors can trace the history of any invoice. It increases transparency and saves the AP team time and effort in answering when or who made changes or how they processed an invoice.

3. Expanding process transparency: Unlike in a paper audit trail, a paperless audit system provides more room for transparency. Automation gives stakeholders increased visibility of the entire AP process. This transparency allows them to make informed decisions about various aspects related to payments and cash flow. AP automation also enables tighter control by showing relevant data only to authorized personnel. Digitization of approvals with workflow tools makes invoice processing simple and quick. Enhanced transparency means you will see where and when issues arise in AP processes and have the ability to resolve them in near-real-time.

How AP automation simplifies audit processes

Manual, paper-based AP procedures slow down audit processes. AP process automation eliminates redundant, manual checking of paper invoices, minimizes human error and saves time. 

Auditors have access to every invoice electronically rather than searching through paper and potentially stumbling upon duplicates or unapproved payments.

1) Improve invoice searchability: With paper invoices, your staff spends endless hours searching for relevant documents. But, with electronic invoices, it becomes easy for auditors to gain access to the information they need quickly and efficiently. I’m

2) Reduce the incidence of fraud: When operating in an automated environment, you can set up checks and balances to enforce procedures to reduce fraud. For example, the invoice trail gives you a clear idea of the upload date, the history of changes, who made the change, and more. Auditors can easily track invoice processing events. Also, AP automation requires you to comply with invoice regulations, thereby reducing the chances of fraud in the future.

3) Get complete visibility into financial statements: AP automation provides visibility into the entire audit history of each document. Every transaction can be checked and validated. It also enables quick retrieval and easy submission to auditors on request. It provides a centralized, bird's eye view of the entire AP process, end-to-end, which is difficult when auditing stacks of paper invoices.

4) Reduce manual errors in accounts: Manual data entry is a stressful process. Exhausted employees tend to make mistakes and unintentionally enter incorrect data. But, an automated environment makes data entry quick, error-free, and reduces costs.

5) Ease of access and storage: With AP automation, you can easily store digitized invoices. Unlike paper invoices, digital invoices ensure cost-effective and streamlined storage and retrieval. Also, digital invoices can be accessed easily by remote teams and by managers for approvals, cutting down processing times.

RDS helps you achieve data compliance and streamline audits 

RDS offers you intelligent data capture and intelligent process automation solutions to streamline your audit process. Go paper-free and experience the convenience of invoice automation.

docAlpha is an advanced intelligent process automation solution that helps you effectively manage vendor invoices, purchase orders, and sales orders—from capture to approval using advanced RPA and machine-learning capabilities.

Some advantages of docAlpha include:

• Enhanced control over cash flows and compliances

• Better visibility of invoice data with real-time alerts

• Cut down invoice processing costs by 80% or more

• Smoothening payment escalations, rejections, and approvals

• Real-time tracking of all payment compliances in the digital AP platform

OpenText Intelligence Capture is an intelligent data capture solution to capture invoice data and convert it into digital documents.

Some benefits of OpenText Intelligence Capture include:

• Reduces manual data entry in an organization

• Eliminates manual, redundant tasks associated with AP processes 

• Machine learning-powered accurate image capture

• Smart classification of business documents 

In addition, an ECM system like OpenText Application Content Management helps your organization prepare for an audit, track system events like password changes, document creation and deletion, and system login and logout. 

Looking for an AP automation solution?

Talk to our expert consultants to understand how to reduce data compliance costs and improve process ROI.  

Contact us today to make AP audits a breeze!