This post was contributed by featured guest, Mitch Taube.

The percentage of invoices received by email vs snail mail is increasing rapidly. While emails cut back on stamps, most companies print the emails with the attachments and face the same problems faced in the pre-email days. Invoice printouts get lost, late payments happen, duplicate payments sometimes occur and there is an overall lack of visibility into the entire process.

Digitally receiving the emails, extracting the invoices and converting them to the proper file type for automated processing with AP automation software is critical. When electronic invoices are received, converted and processed by a third-party AP automation partner, they can be processed more quickly than those with in-house receipt and manual data entry. This leads to big wins for businesses that handle a high volume of invoices.

Get Your Email Invoices Ready for Automation

Currently, at least half of all organizations receive their invoices in the mail, on paper states PayStream Advisor’s 2016 Enterprise Content Management Report. However, that same study found that 30% of organizations receive invoices by email, and this second number continues to grow larger and larger every year. But whether an invoice arrives by snail mail or email, it needs to be digitally formatted correctly for data extraction before an invoice automation process can begin.

Imagining how this works with a paper invoice is easy enough. You pen the envelope, scan the invoice, capture data, load to system and it enters your automation workflow. However, things can be a little more difficult with electronic invoices. Reason being, invoices arriving by email can show up in any number of different file types. They can appear in PDF, TIFF, JPG, Word document or HTML form, or in some cases simply be pasted into the body of an email.

So then, as opposed to a piece of paper being scanned as a TIFF image, the various file types that electronic invoices are sent as have to be converted to TIFF images before automation can begin. Instead of an analog-to-digital conversion, it’s a digital-to-digital conversion, which can be a tedious process for companies to handle themselves.

How AP Automation Works with Email Invoices

To start, a third-party digital mailroom partner will set up a dedicated inbox on their server to receive your email invoices, monitor it throughout the day and import invoices into conversion software for processing. Once imported, the emails are stripped of their attachments and mined for invoice information. The original emails themselves will be maintained in a database for future reference while the invoice itself is converted to a tiff file for automated invoice processing. In the case of attachments that have multiple invoices included in them, these will be manually separated and loaded individually into the software system. Then, the new and converted invoices can be loaded into workflow automation software for routing, approval and processing, or direct data entry to your ERP system with three-way matching, whichever best matches your business needs.

The major benefit of electronic invoice scanning is speed. According to PayStream Advisor’s 2016 Data Capture and Mailrooms Technology Insight Report, 40% of invoices received by a third-party provider are processed within 5-10 days of receipt, vs. 10% of those processed in-house with manual data entry. That’s four times as many invoices being processed within the same time period. That faster pace makes a major difference when it comes to dealing with suppliers, managing cashflow and other aspects of financial management.

Mailroom Scanning of Electronic Invoices Makes Business Move Faster

While emailing invoices makes sending and receiving easier, it can make extracting the necessary information from those invoices for the purposes of AP automation more difficult than expected. A lot of work goes into converting files to the proper format for automation, and most organizations simply do not have the available time, skill set or staff to do it on their own. Electronic mailroom scanning and third-party invoice conversion procedures quickly mine and deliver the images and information companies need for streamlined invoice processing, which can lead to major improvements across the board for businesses of every size.

 

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.

Rate this Post: