Firstly, what’s wrong with manual invoice processing?

Well, like many human-led processes, it is time-consuming, costly, hard to oversee and prone to error. On the other hand, automated invoice processing is: fast, increases productivity improves accuracy and most importantly, helps you to reduce costs.

These days there is a lot of fear that robots are going to take all the human jobs and wipe us out of existence. Indeed, if you walk into a factory you may be surprised at the number of robots that are working on the assembly line. Or if you go to a McDonald’s, you might be met with a tablet rather than a human when it comes to placing your order.

The reality is that in most cases, robots are augmenting rather than replacing humans in the workforce. In many cases, they are doing the menial, laborious or backbreaking tasks that most of us would rather not do, or they are assisting us to make our lives easier.

While there are many aspects of accounting that still require the “human touch” or the “soft” skills required for certain types of decision-making, there are some accounting tasks that robots excel at and that they should be entrusted with.

Using the right software solution, accounting departments can go paperless and automate mundane processes such as routing and approvals.

At first, you might think of automated accounting as something that is complex or scary, but in reality, it can be quite simple. Here’s how it works;

Step One: Capture

Our DocuWare solution uses intelligent optical character recognition (OCR) to automate data entry. OCR allows you to quickly and easily capture information from invoices and ensures those documents are instantly available to everyone involved by uploading the document to a central repository. DocuWare can be integrated with most other popular office software solutions so that the capturing process is greatly simplified and it allows you to ensure compliance by matching purchase orders with received goods and services.

Step Two: Index

As your invoices are captured, all of the accompanying structured and unstructured data is sent to a centralised and secure repository. Then, DocuWare’s document management system indexes them, allowing you to search, manage and modify documents with ease. DocuWare also allows you to make sure each version of the invoice is the latest version, eliminating unnecessary duplicate files.

Step Three: Approve

After an invoice has been captured and indexed, DocuWare’s workflow automation allows you to define how the approval process is executed. You can establish automatic approvals based on invoice amounts, vendor or any other criteria, or set up an automated workflow to route invoices to the key decision-makers. Compliance and productivity are improved thanks to the transparency of the process and as a result, you’ll save money and foster stronger relationships with your customers.

Want to learn more?

Automated invoice processing is just one of the many ways Docuworx helps companies and organisations across Asia Pacific with their digital journeys. Docuworx can show you how to remove huge amounts of work from your accounting team by digitising every invoice and implementing intelligent indexing for secure storage and instant retrieval. We can also help you design preconfigured workflows for approval routing or setup straight-through processing to help speed up the payment process and keep your business on the path to success.

Contact us today and register 

For our next luncheon presentation to find out more about how workflow automation can improve your business.

Or For more info on automated invoice processing and workflows, 

Contact us today.

It is often said that many of the jobs that people do today didn’t exist 10 or 20 years ago. With technology moving at such a quick pace, it can be hard to keep up with all the developments and new terminologies. Indeed, one of the first questions we often face when dealing with new clients is “What is a workflow?”

Put simply, a workflow is a collection of business processes that are executed to achieve a specific goal.

What distinguishes a workflow from a process, is that workflows generally have more moving parts, and are the sum of multiple related processes.

Workflows can be simple or complex. An example of the former would be approving an invoice, while the latter might include the multiple steps required to connect several departments and manage inventory.

Without the use of a workflow solution, the traditional processes that comprise a workflow tend to be menial, repetitive and time-consuming tasks.

In the past, employees might have to physically deliver documents, sort through files and contact various people throughout the organisation to execute a single workflow.

However, with a workflow automation solution, software is able to automatically route tasks according to a defined set of rules, which greatly streamlines things.

For example, let’s say an employee wants to record an expense they have incurred. They can do this by simply taking a photo of the receipt with a smartphone and uploading it into the company’s document management system. The system can then recognise the value of the expense and send it to the appropriate person for approval. Once approved, the expense can be re-routed to accounting so that reimbursement can be arranged.

In essence, there are four types of workflow: manual routing, which are very simple workflows sent through the system manually by a user, ad hoc, which are slightly more advanced than manual routing, rules-based, which allow for pre-determined and standardized processes to be executed without user interaction, and advanced, which are highly structured but flexible workflows that transition between automated and ad hoc as required.

There are a number of workflow solutions on the market, so choosing can be difficult. After scouring the market, we identified Docuware as the best solution and have since become an authorised platinum partner of Docuware in Australia.

With Docuworx, your business can save considerable time and effort via the use of Docuware automation and workflow solution, assisting you with:

• Visual Workflow Paths Provide consistency and visibility into your day-to-day tasks
• Task Routing accelerates the decision making and approval process automatically
• Workflow Designer enables drag-and-drop customizability

Before embarking on your digital transformation journey, it is important that you strike the right balance between simply digitising processes and rejigging your entire business. Workflow automation should be seen as the enhancement rather than replacement of your business, and, for this reason, should not be feared.

We begin each engagement with our customers by visiting their business and analyzing and documenting their business processes. We call this the “discovery phase” and it is a crucial step in understanding a business so that we can help tailor-make the right solution.

Contact us today and register for our next luncheon presentation to find out more about how workflow automation can improve your business.