This post was contributed by featured guest, Mitch Taube.

Accounts payable automation can revolutionize your business. You’ll find that problems with manual processes; including slow processing times, accuracy errors, lack of transparency, and the inability to easily handle spikes in volume can all be things of the past. It makes sense for some organizations with sufficient resources and manageable volumes to keep invoice receipt and data entry in-house. But for corporations who want to get out of the paper handling business altogether, a great place to start automating invoice processing is in the mailroom.

Mailroom Scanning Makes Automation Easy

With mailroom scanning, both electronic and paper invoices are received directly at an off-site, third-party scanning facility. Paper invoices are immediately prepped and scanned where they join those received electronically for indexing. Your digitized invoices are then distributed, via workflow automation software, to the appropriate people in your organization for immediate decision-making and action based on your business rules. The data is then automatically fed into your ERP or line-of-business software, eliminating manual data entry and those pesky processing errors that result. Your processed and paid digital images can then be securely stored in a cloud-based or in-house document management system for easy and immediate retrieval and sharing whenever you need them.

Replacing your old, analog invoice processing method with mailroom scanning, email processing and AP automation software brings previously unattainable speed and accuracy to your accounts payable process. You will also no longer need a mailroom on-site, nor the staff to work it, nor a place to store the invoices once they have been processed.

Proven Speed and Efficiency Benefits

Of course, promises of speed and improved efficiency wouldn’t matter much if there weren’t verifiable results to back them up, but there are. According to PayStream Advisor’s 2016 Data Capture & Mailrooms Technology Insight Report, 27% of survey respondents using a third-party provider for mailroom scanning reported quicker approval cycles, while 22% of respondents said they had fewer lost and missing invoices. Others reported decreased overhead, more timely payments, and improved supplier relationships.

Avoid Errors and Improve Security

There are other challenges involved with manual processing beyond inefficiency. If your organization’s invoice volume fluctuates seasonally, that opens up more opportunities for inaccuracy in distribution, data entry and turnaround time, when your organization can least afford them. As errors mount, this can affect not only long-term financial health but legal compliance as well. There’s also the issue of a lack of security around paper invoices and how easily they can be lost, misplaced, or copied.

Begin your AP automation process with mailroom scanning and email processing, and you’ll be improving both your financial infrastructure and in-house atmosphere. You won’t have to worry about an overwhelmed staff losing invoices or processing them incorrectly or late, resulting in a leaner more productive workforce. You’ll also be better prepared for audits and meeting compliance guidelines thanks to tracking, reporting and expedited information retrieval. A professional third-party mailroom scanning provider should have an in-depth knowledge of the accounts payable process and certify that they have the controls in place to ensure the security of your financial documents while in their facility.

For organizations that don’t want to handle any paper, utilizing mailroom scanning at the very beginning of an automated AP process can save time and money, increase accuracy and flexibility and help better position them for a healthier more agile future.

Mitch Taube is the principal founder of Digiscribe, formed in 2001 to provide companies of all sizes with cost-effective document scanning, document management software and workflow automation services. In 2010, he co-founded Digiscribe New England, an affiliated company serving the document management and business process automation needs of companies and organizations in New England. To learn more, visit digiscribe.info.