What is the ROI of an automated invoice solution?

When you think of how invoices are currently processed in your AP department, do issues like slow invoice processing, missed payment deadlines or an overall lack of efficiency plague your team? Perhaps your department is still manually processing invoices? Automated invoice processing is one of the most sought after solutions right now for accelerating and enhancing AP processes. Yet investing in such a solution requires careful consideration: How much time will it save employees? How can it lower the processing cost per invoice? And by when would such an investment amortize?

To help you answer these questions, we have created an ROI Calculator that measures your savings potential through the implementation of an automated invoice processing. It also helps you to decide if now is the right time for the investment and estimates how long it takes for the investment to amortize. What’s more, you will also see how much time your employees who currently process invoices can spend on more value-added tasks thanks to automation.

The ROI Calculator for automated invoice processing is based on assumptions derived from the SER Group’s experience and insights from over 2,000 projects. It also, however, takes your individual numbers into account. Just enter the amount of invoices processed per year, the number of working days per year, and a few other figures that you likely have readily available. Our calculator shows you the amortization time, current costs and savings per invoice, overall cost and time savings per year. With this, you can easily decide for yourself if the implementation of an automated invoice processing solution makes sense for your organization.

The implementation of an automated invoice processing solution is also a strategic consideration, as invoice processes are the lifeline of all business operations. Without them, suppliers would lose revenue, business relationships could become unstable, and customers might not receive their goods and services. There are many benefits of an automated invoice processing solution. Here is an overview of the key ones that a solution should offer:

• Cost savings: Companies save on average about 50% on each automatically processed invoice
  
  
• Deadline fulfillment: Reliably meet deadlines for early payment discounts and payments thanks to faster processing times, an up-to-date invoice ledger, and automated alerts of approaching deadlines
  
  
• Cost transparency: Create total cost transparency for liquidity planning without unpleasant surprises from overlooked invoices or incorrectly posted entries
  
  
• Less effort: High-performing verification and validation mechanisms dramatically reduce the amount of manual verification work and allow your AP team to focus on more important tasks
  
  
• Quality assurance: A high-quality and transparent invoice verification process is always traceable because processing steps are fully documented
  
  
• Compliance: Legal and corporate retention regulations are automatically fulfilled – ensuring audit-proof archiving
  
  
• Deep integration: An intelligent invoice automation solution integrates with other leading business systems, e.g. your ERP or SAP system, to save your AP team time and ensure a positive user experience