Automation Dominates Top AP Goals

From: IOMA

Three of the top five goals for Accounts Payable (AP) departments for 2007 are related to automation, according to the most recent annual survey of AP operations conducted by RECAP Inc., a consulting firm specializing in AP services, such as master vendor file management and payment recovery audits. RECAP revealed the survey results at its annual conference in Ft. Lauderdale.

These three goals in the top five are: Implementing or increasing the use of imaging (second place), electronic payments (fourth place), and electronic invoices (fifth place). The number-one goal (the one most cited) is improving efficiency, timeliness, and processes. Rounding out the top five goals is improving accuracy, controls, and compliance.

It's safe to assume that AP departments will look to automation to help achieve these process-related goals.

Some of the other AP automation-related findings include:

• approximately 75% of companies responding get some invoices electronically, but the percentage is not increasing over prior years' results;
• half get some expense reports electronically;
• use of imaging is high (58%);
• retention of paper source documents is surprisingly high (64%) given the use of imaging;
• use of Interactive Web Response (IWR) for vendors remains low (9%);
• most (67%) use laser checks; and
• use of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is low (10%) but is increasing rapidly.