Automated Invoicing Solutions Can Help Beat 5 Top GST Challenges

SAP Concur India | 21-09-2017

50% of companies still receive invoices by paper, and 36% by email, leading to hours spent on manual processing — and the hours spent correcting the mistakes that can slip through when invoices are handled manually. This slip through is not just payment related but also reflects in your inability to file for refunds in the mandatory timeframe issued by the government. If this sounds like your business, then you’ve probably experienced the challenges that this adds to payments processing also.

Automated invoicing solutions can help you beat five of your top challenges, including GST.

Challenge #1 - Lengthy processing times

Tricks to Beat It: Eliminate piles of paper. Scale AP to manage larger volumes without adding staff. This not only means your invoices are electronic but also helps you submit them on time for tax refund. Over and above that, the average cost for an organization to cut a paper check versus an automated solution is nearly reduced by 1/5th.

Challenge # 2- High invoice processing costs

Tricks to Beat It: Reduce hard costs by going from a manual process to an automated one ($13 vs $4). Gain the ability to leverage existing processes for purchase orders and receiving, or those that can be migrated. This also helps in turn help build better cashflow from the refunds that come in.

Challenge # 3- Lack of visibility into tax components and payment data

Tricks to Beat It: Eliminate issues like lost invoices, duplicate payments and no visibility into taxes. Gain the simple ability to search for invoices by common criteria, the ability to build custom queries to access data or even get a quick look into all reclaimable tax components.

An Invoice is a company liability. You cannot have a trustworthy Working Capital Ratio without 100% visibility
Accruals for ALL invoices (ones in their financial systems and ones not)
A complete picture of ALL liabilities includes all approved purchases as well

Challenge # 4 - Inability to capture early payment discounts

Tricks to Beat It: Take advantage of early payment discounts and ensure vendor / supplier validates your invoices for faster GST refund

A complete picture into all liabilities allows the business to become more effective with their cash and forecasting their cash needs. Could the business take some of their excess cash (perhaps they have an avg. working capital ratio of 1.5) and invest this money smarter?
Extend cash needs (cash forecast) potentially an additional 30-50 days utilizing Card/Vpay on backend of process
Invoice systems help direct Vendor Spend maximizing charge volume and maximizing rewards and cashback.

Challenge # 5- Late supplier payments

22% of all businesses can only forecast their mid-term cash flow with 5 percent accuracy. (Aberdeen Group)

Tricks to Beat It:17% of the typical company’s invoices cause exceptions (Ardent Partners). Managing cash flow with manual invoice processing is a daunting, inefficient task for most businesses today, draining the business of time, money and resources.

Streamline how you pay invoices. AP automation provides full visibility into what your team is planning to spend and what has already been spent, so you can make informed decisions and better manage every supplier payment.