Today, handling invoice approvals and receivables tracking manually no longer seems feasible. Market conditions force companies to operate as efficiently as possible. Digital transformation frees up employees' time so they can deliver better service.
Centralizing Operations
Companies are taking significant steps to centralize their collection and invoice approval operations. Automating and simplifying invoice approval with the PaperWork BPM process management solution greatly reduces the repetitive manual workload of managers and employees. Automation frees up time for strategic decision-making, auditing and more interaction with customers. In addition to tighter control over payments and invoices, the new system lowers processing costs per invoice and increases organizational efficiency.
Companies with a distributed structure that have to process thousands of invoices in particular need a large workforce. As the company grows, centralizing and automating processes becomes a necessity.
Invoice Processing and Its Problems
Invoice processing causes major problems, especially in distributed structures. Continuing with manual processing becomes increasingly difficult as the company expands. PaperWork BPM provides a digital, central system to efficiently collect, review and approve invoices and process payments. Invoices and their attachments can be viewed in the system within authorization limits, and process stages can be tracked.
The Cost of Manual Processing
Manual processing requires physically sorting invoices, obtaining manual approvals from managers, and matching invoices with related documents such as requests. This process is not only laborious but also costly, and as invoice volume grows, companies become unable to manage it.
Implementing PaperWork BPM represents a critical step toward optimizing business operations and sustaining growth. Through digital transformation, companies demonstrate their ongoing commitment to increasing operational efficiency, exceeding customer expectations, managing costs and improving employee productivity.
How do you automate the invoice approval process?
Invoice approval automation means running the receipt of the invoice, checking its information, routing it to authorized people, recording the decision and transferring the result to the relevant system through a defined workflow. Before starting the design, finance, procurement and IT teams need to agree together on which document is approved under which conditions.
PaperWork's finance solution supports managing invoices and their attachments within the process, tracking approval steps and moving transactions forward through the ERP connection. The flow below is a sample design that can be adapted to the organization's authorization and control rules.
Sample flow from incoming invoice to posting
- Receive the invoice and its attachments. Record which channel the document came from, the related supplier and the unit responsible for the transaction. Make related records such as the invoice, purchase order and delivery note accessible from the same transaction.
- Check the information. Decide which of the invoice number, date, amount and supplier details are mandatory. Separately define the transactions that require matching against a purchase record.
- Choose the right approval path. Document how criteria such as department, cost center, transaction type and amount determine the approver. If several people need to decide, clarify whether approvals run sequentially or in parallel.
- Record the decision with its reason. Approval, rejection and correction request must be kept distinct. It should be clear which user a transaction returns to when a correction is requested, and which information must be completed for it to move forward again.
- Transfer the result to the relevant system. Decide which record will be created or updated in the ERP for an approved transaction. Make it possible to track from the process whether the transfer succeeded.
You can assess how these steps translate to your organization within the scope of PaperWork process automation. The details of the process are determined by the systems in use, the approval policy and the project scope.
Design exceptions from the start
A good approval workflow also defines how missing or mismatched information is handled. You can use the table below in your process design meeting.
| Situation | Decision to make in the design | Outcome to check in the demo |
|---|---|---|
| Missing invoice attachment or mandatory information | Which team will take on the completion task? | Does the transaction return to the responsible person with an explanation and the missing information? |
| Mismatch in amount or order information | Who will have review and decision authority? | Can the reason for the mismatch and the decision made be traced? |
| Approver is on leave | How will the scope and validity period of the delegation be defined? | Can the pending task be handled without opening the transaction to an unauthorized person? |
| The same invoice arrives again | Which fields will be used for the duplicate check? | Can the existing transaction be found without creating a second record? |
| ERP transfer does not complete | Which team will be notified, and how will the retry work? | Is the risk of a duplicate record controlled when the same transaction is transferred again? |
This table is not a list of ready-made features; it is designed to help define your organization's needs and acceptance scenarios. In particular, review delegation, duplicate checks and retry behavior in the demo together with the configuration that will be used.
Which questions should ERP integration answer?
Simply establishing a connection is not a sufficient acceptance criterion for integration. You also need to decide which system information is read from, where it is written, and how records in the two systems are linked.
- Which system will be the master source for supplier, purchase order and cost center information?
- Where will the invoice document be stored, and how will it be accessed from the ERP record?
- At what stage will the approved transaction be transferred to the ERP?
- If the transfer is rejected, what explanation will the user see and where will they make the correction?
- How will the records in both systems be kept consistent after a cancellation or correction?
Evaluate PaperWork integration options together with your current ERP version, access methods and data fields. Defining the scope of the connection in a pilot makes project expectations concrete.
How will you measure the improvement?
Record baseline values before automation and use the same definitions in later measurements. For example, you can start with these three indicators:
- Approval completion time: The time between the moment the invoice is ready for approval and the moment the final approval is given. Decide in advance whether calendar hours or working hours will be used.
- Backlog age: The time elapsed since an approval task that is open at the time of measurement was created. Review the result by team and approval step.
- Return-for-correction rate: The share of transactions started in the same period that were returned for correction at least once. Track multiple returns of the same invoice separately; do not confuse them with the number of transactions.
When evaluating results, also record invoice type, transaction volume and number of approval steps. This way you can see more clearly whether the change comes from the process design or from a different workload.
Review your own invoice flow in a demo
Pick one normal transaction, one with missing documents and one with a different approval rule. Using examples that are suitable for internal sharing, walk through the same scenario step by step, from receiving the invoice to transferring the result to the ERP. Make sure the demo shows who acts, where the task waits and how the exception is resolved.
Request a demo tailored to your organization, and let's address the needs of your finance and IT teams together.
Sources
https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/3488966
https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/digital-workflow
https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/process-optimization
Would you like to see PaperWork in your organization?
Request a Demo
