What is accounts payable automation?

The accounting world is raving about the benefits of automation and for good reason. Great accounts payable automation processes help you take slow, repetitive tasks that ordinarily waste entire days each month, and let intelligent software handle them for you.

Despite evident progress in the industry, we still encounter finance teams who don’t trust this new technology yet or can’t spare the time to look into it. But the long term gains far outweigh the initial teething period and initial cost of using this new tech.

It’s time to free up your hard-working finance team from being chained to low-value, high-effort tasks, and put their skills to good use. Let AP automation do the rest.

What does this mean? 

Let’s go back to basics. As the name suggests, accounts payable automation refers to tools or processes that eliminate manual aspects of accounts payable, and instead automate them. This usually involves a dedicated software, some examples of which we’ll examine shortly.

Specifically, AP automation lets you submit and approve purchase orders and invoices digitally. A worthwhile solution will read invoices and extract information for you, which means no data entry for anyone on your team.

The goal for this automation is to move the process along faster, reduce errors, and help the company scale easily.

The key benefits of an automated AP process

Once up and running, AP automation will help out everyone on your team. We understand you are hesitant because you still have to make that initial purchase, but it’s a long-term investment that will soon pay for itself over and over. 

When using Zahara, accounts payable automation:

Saves time:

The previously slow and repetitive work is almost instantly done using OCR intelligence.

Leads to fewer errors:

Humans make mistakes. It’s just a fact of life. By comparison, computers make simple mistakes far less often, so you can focus on tasks a computer can’t (yet!) do, like implementing a financial strategy. 

Follow your instructions:

One of the easiest ways to cut back on unnecessary spending is to improve your internal controls, but this is often overlooked. Using AP automation means you’re happy with every purchase. 

Keeps your documents safe in the cloud:

Having an entire storage room for your paper files should be a thing of the past. Keep everything neat and tidy online rather than using paper purchase orders and emailing them around the office. 

Makes AP accessible from anywhere:

Your employees are no longer tethered to their desks. People are working from home, on the road, and of course, in the office. If all your documents are physical, the relevant people need to be in the office to do their jobs. Zahara encourages flexible working, which helps you match your workers’ needs. In 2024, around 95% of workers prefer having the option of some sort of hybrid working, so if you want to gain and retain quality staff, you need to meet them where they’re at. Having dynamic processes is just one easy way to accommodate that. 

Automate your accounts payable process with Zahara

Hopefully, with all the mentioned benefits, you’ll be ready to automate your accounts payable process! Once you’ve experienced the ease of an automated process, it’s difficult to go back to a manual one; that’s how much of a difference it makes. 

Automated systems are almost always:

• Faster

• Easier to understand

• Less error-prone

• Cheaper in the long run

Get in touch with one of our Accounts Payable automation consultants, and they’ll be able to show you how AP automation can make a big impact on your team and wider business.