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Recent research from the financial process market authority shows that 36 percent of companies in the US now automate their travel and expense processing and that implementation of T & E management solutions is on the rise.

Traditional manual paper expense processing is time-consuming and laborious – with data entry prone to error, it’s heavy on storage requirements, and authorisation bottlenecks and distribution problems are common.

And yet it is a process businesses cannot do without – few organisations do not require employees to travel at some stage.

Business T & E costs rising

It is also a growing cost for businesses – almost 60 percent of the PayStream survey respondents reported that expenditure on travel and expense had risen over the last three years.

Travel (fares, petrol, etc) and associated costs are going up – and the amount of business travel itself is also set to grow.

This rise in cost associated with T & E has also seen many more businesses moving to require receipts for all expenses rather than for reimbursements over a certain financial limit. More than half (52 percent) of PayStream’s surveyed companies say they now need receipts for all expenses, up on the 44 percent figure of the previous year.

Which all adds up to even more T & E paper, greater processing time, and higher T & E processing costs.

 Automate T & E: remove the paper, speed up the process and reduce the costs

Documation’s Expense Processing Solution removes the need for paper distribution and streamlines the whole reimbursement process:

• the claimant creates an expense form online, with an option to electronically attach through scanning relevant receipts
• the form (and receipts) are routed directly to the appropriate individual for authorisation
• once authorised, financial data is posted to the company ERP for payment.

The expense form and receipts are available for instant access 24/7, and audit trails and management and information reports mean the whole process is now far more transparent.

Expense processing has just become easier for the claimant, for the approver
and for the expense processing department.

Additional benefits of automating T & E:

• no more data entry by the finance team – avoiding mis-keying errors and getting rid of their time commitment
• completing the expense form is easier – default options are provided and many fields can be automatically populated
• no more lost or forgotten claims – in-built automatic escalation and notification flags ensure processing is on track
• queries, errors and rejections can be resolved swiftly – resulting in happier employees.

And automation also brings increased control, reducing the risk of fraud

Automating T & E processing not only means there’s less opportunity for error – but also reduces the risk of fraud.

The online business resource Fresh Business Thinking reports that, according to recent surveys, between 5 percent and 20 percent of expense claims are either magnified or completely fictitious.

Documation’s Travel and Expense Solution enables businesses to ensure travel and expense rules are adhered to, with expense claims approved by the relevant authority in accordance with company policy.

Find out how  Documation’s Expense Solution could benefit your business – call +44 (0) 23 8064 7775, email us or see the website for information about T & E processing and all Documation’s document management solutions.

This news comes as a welcome reversal of the trend that has been dogging British business for the past decade with an average late-payment peak of 17 days in 2011. The average as explained by Dun and Bradstreet in this latest report stands currently at 15 days late against payment terms.

Late payments are a huge problem for business – cash-flow issues can see companies having to cut back on trading, reduce staffing levels and at times lose their business altogether – and which can lead to a devastating knock-on effect in the local community, in the more widespread commercial area, and for the British economy in general.

The government is so concerned about the potential damage the late payment effect can cause to individual businesses and on a wider scale nationally, that the Department of Business and Innovation Skills has set up the Prompt Payment Code, administered by the Institute of Credit Management.

With its strap-line driving a change in payment culture, the code urges organisations to pay suppliers on time, to ensure they have a reliable system for dealing with disputes accurately and swiftly, and to encourage good practice through asking lead suppliers to adopt the Prompt Payment Code throughout their own supply chains.

For the customer, eliminating late payments has the additional benefits of:

• enhancing the customer-supplier relationship and the reputation of the business
•  improving the business’s financial position through doing away with the need for making late payment interest and penalty payments
• optimising the take-up of early settlement supplier discounts opportunities (and may help in negotiating better deals)
• ensuring supplies aren’t stopped.

And it’s long been recognised that late payments are certainly not necessarily ‘tactical’ or even the result of customer cash-flow issues, but in most cases caused by poor practice and inefficient and slow processing procedures prone to error.

So it would be hard to see why automating accounts payable (AP) processing and implementing a streamlined and efficient solution would not have a major effect on improving payment performance.

With Documation’s Invoice Management Solution’s (IMS) automatic document and data capture invoice processing gets off to the fastest possible start – and means data entry costs are significantly reduced as well.

IMS enables companies to capture e-invoices automatically (typically delivered via email), collect  their data and post them straight on to the finance system once they’re ready to be paid – many companies receiving e-invoices are still merely printing them to paper and therefore losing all the advantages e-invoice processing brings.

High performance invoice matching and online coding and authorisation streamlines the processing, and instant document retrieval means that any disputes can be quickly resolved.  With alerts to flag approaching deadlines, IMS also includes powerful reporting tools to monitor performance.

So invoices no longer get lost between department, or sink to the bottom of an in-tray, but are ready flagged for prompt payment – and following the recent updated EU Payments Directive which came into force March 2013 prompt payment is going to become even more important for the customer.

This amended legislation (European Directive 2011/7/EU on Combating Late Payment in Commercial Transactions) has been devised to make pursuing payment within the European Union simpler – according to the UK government, “reducing the culture of paying late and making paying on time the norm”.

These new rules will mean organisations having to pay interest and reimburse reasonable recovery costs if they do not pay for goods and services on time, within 60 days for business and 30 days for public authorities.

Dun and Bradstreet’s report looked at payment data for nine EU countries. The UK’s 15-day average is slightly above the average across the nine countries – and behind Germany (the ‘best’ payer at only six days beyond payment terms), Netherlands, Belgium and France, but in front of Spain, Ireland, Italy, and Portugal at the other end of the scale with an average of 22 days late.

See our website for more information about Documation’s Invoice Management Solution.

Photo courtesy of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust

The dramatic decline in the number of bees in the country and the potentially disastrous effect on the ecology that could result has recently hit the headlines:  last month Waitrose asked fruit, vegetable and flower suppliers to avoid using pesticides containing neonicotinoid chemicals said to cause the harm; only last week beekeepers protested in London, calling for the government to support a ban of these pesticides; and this week saw the EU place a restriction on the use of the pesticides, saying they should not be used on crops attractive to bees and other pollinators.

Documation’s support for the Trust forms a part of the company’s social responsibility policy.

John Wallace, Documation CEO, explains, “As a company involved in automating business processes to eliminate the use of paper with all the environmental benefits that brings, we are very aware of the need to protect and support the environment as much as possible.”

At a recent staff day, Documation invited the Bumblebee Conservation Trust to give a talk. The company was fascinated to hear that there are 24 different species of bumblebee in the UK, and of how vital their role in the ecology cycle and for the country’s economy. One third of the world’s global agricultural produce relies on insect pollination – and in the UK bumblebees are among the main pollinators – and which contribute £440 million to the UK’s economy.

Wild pollinators, such as bumblebees as opposed to honeybees, are responsible for over 65 percent of crop pollination and as well as the fruit trees and vegetable plants in the food production cycle, many wild flowers and hedgerows depend on bumblebees for pollination – with in turn insects and wild life depending on these flowers and the hedgerows for survival.

The loss of the country’s flower-rich grasslands and the bumblebees’ natural home has been the major cause for the drop in bumblebee numbers and the Bumblebee Conservation Trust was established by Professor Dave Goulson (who is about to bring out his book A Sting In The Tale, published by Jonathan Cape) with its aim to support rare bumblebees through conservation projects working to safeguard and restore existing and create new bumblebee habitats.

Jo Chesworth, the Trust’s Conservation Officer for South West England, explains, “The work of the bumblebee underpins many of the ecosystems and landscapes in the country. Two of our bumblebee species have recently become extinct and two are on the brink of extinction.”

To raise funds for the Trust, staff at Documation took part in a stripy dress-down day, with Documation adding to the individual donations – the ‘stripier’ the outfit, the greater the donation.

John Wallace, Documation CEO, says, “Documation is delighted to be supporting the work of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust.

“As well as being able to support the charity with a donation, this is a wonderful opportunity to be able to do something useful on a practical basis. We heard how important it is to provide the right habitat for the bumblebees, and the Trust has excellent advice on simple and easy ways to make gardens more attractive for them.

“Even planting herbs in a window box can make a difference.

“Our dress-down day raised £200 for the Trust and we will be continuing our support for the charity, and wish them every success with their on-going projects.”

Documation is a leading provider of invoice processing and document management software and services solutions to a variety of market sectors in the UK, across Europe and around the globe. Through removing paper and manual processing from business operations our clients can reduce costs, improve efficiency, enhance business control and achieve legal compliance.

So what’s prompting organisations to adopt e-invoicing? Securing a reduction in overall processing costs is currently one of the biggest driving factors according to the survey’s respondents, with e-invoicing leading to a significant reduction in this cost. Benefits brought to the AP department include:

• Reduced data entry costs
• Reduced document storage costs
• Improved productivity of the AP team
• Improved supplier relationships
• Improved level of service to internal departments
• Reduction in late payments
• Reduction in duplicate invoices.

The second main reason for deciding to move to e-invoicing, as reported by PayStream’s survey respondents, is to eliminate paper from the AP department. Processing paper invoices manually is labour intensive and expensive, and as well as reducing the physical amount of paper in the office – and greatly improving a business’s green footprint – adopting an e-invoicing solution also helps bring down the cost of invoice processing considerably.

A typical purchase to pay process (P2P) involves the AP department in dealing with a host of key documents – purchase orders, invoices, receipts, etc. This has always been a significant issue for the AP department, particularly as many need to be authorised or approved by individuals across the organisation, a lengthy process and prone to error. An e-invoicing solution enables the AP staff to process any document which enters the department, effectively and efficiently.

According to the PayStream survey’s respondents, the biggest advantage of moving to e-invoicing is the resulting reduction in procure-to-pay cycle time. Benefits of this reduced P2P cycle time include being able to ensure that invoices are paid on time and greater supplier discount take-up. It also brings better relationships with suppliers.

But even though the number of businesses considering adopting an e-invoicing solution is increasing – the survey reports 46 percent of their respondents currently evaluating moving to e-invoicing – PayStream Advisors found that barriers to implementing such a solution remain within organisations. Of the survey respondents, 51 percent said that one of the top obstacles is reluctance on the part of suppliers to adopt electronic invoicing – a barrier to automating constantly reported as a main concern for organisations. Overcoming supplier resistance isn’t easy, but most solution providers offer on-boarding programmes to help clients convert to e-invoicing.

Documation’s supplier portal, available with IMS (our Invoice Management Solution), provides suppliers with a window into the IMS system, allowing them to upload invoices directly into the IMS workflow process and resolve queries themselves.

Read our blog post Challenges that Accounts Payable Face when Wanting to Adopt an Automated E-invoicing Solution, for more information on overcoming difficulties with moving to e-invoicing.

However, despite the reluctance of some, PayStream Advisors believes that the number of suppliers converting to electronic invoicing has increased.  This is a very positive sign, and not least in showing that businesses and suppliers are developing ways to collaborate to build better relationships and help each other become more efficient.

The PayStream Advisors report states that nearly a quarter (24 percent) of survey respondents reported to be using an e-invoice solution, with 11 percent currently deploying a solution. At Documation we believe the adoption of e-invoicing will continue to grow over the next couple of years – as well as the move to automate other departments, such as human resources.

So if you feel your AP department could become more efficient by implementing an e-invoicing solution, then why not contact us today to see how we could help your business.

To find out more about Documation’s Invoice Management Solution and the other solutions and products we provide, please visit www.documation.co.uk or email info@documation.co.uk.

Last month the Ministry of Justice announced that they were introducing crime eForms– that from 1 April 2013 they would no longer be accepting paper versions.

UCAS, the organisation which manages applications to higher education courses in the UK, has been using eForms for student applications for years, and will only now send out paper application packs in ‘exceptional circumstances’.

When was the last time you filled in a paper-based application form for a job?

The number of online shoppers is growing year by year.

eForms are part of everyday life – and everyday business life.

 What is an eForm?

An eForm offers a simple, cost-effective way for an organisation to capture data, data which can be accessed, retrieved and processed to aid the organisation in carrying out business and meeting targets.

In essence an eForm is a document with blank spaces to be filled in online – and can be as simple or as complex as the information required.

Online validation ensures greater data accuracy than via paper-counterparts. Prompts help with form-filling and controlled options – drop-down lists, tick boxes, etc., – reduce input time as well as improve data relevance and validation.

An employee completing an expense eForm can have his individual data automatically input –address, department, car registration number, for example, – and with the widespread use of post code address finder applications it’s rare now to have to completely input your address online.

eForms eliminate the mis-keying risks associated with multiple application entry as the data is available instantly online and the need to have to return incorrectly and half-completed forms – validation processing sees to that.

The eForm can link to other documents and ‘grow’ as it travels through processing.

And eForms also remove that struggle with the handwriting that is just not going to be deciphered…

Benefits for the business

As well as receiving fully completed, legible, accurate and validated data, the use of eForms means for a business eliminating paper forms – reducing stationery and associated printing costs.

In the current ecological drive for the paperless office, using eForms will also help a company meet its corporate responsibility and green targets.

Plus with data input quicker, more efficient and cheaper (no envelopes, stamps required) introducing eForms into a business also makes for an enhanced customer/client experience – which can only be good.

So how does your business use eForms? Or how could your business use eForms?

An eForm can be used regardless of the type of data to be captured, the applications subsequently processing the data, or the market or the industry of the business, and organisations use eForms in many different ways.

For example, making a simple internal purchase requisition online is often via an eForm.

At Documation, a supplier portal can form part of a client’s Invoice Management Solution (IMS). Suppliers can use the portal to create their own invoices online and track their progress through the payment process. This is particularly useful for the smaller suppliers who do not have their own electronic invoice generation capability – and for the IMS client it means the invoice has been coded directly into their system, accurately and with online validation. Invoice processing for this supplier has therefore become faster and more efficient.

One of Documation’s clients, a motor vehicle parts manufacturer, uses eForms when creating a new product. Input from the various departments from research to marketing can be supplemented as appropriate, the form retrieved, accessed and added to easily and efficiently.

A major NHS Trust is about to implement Documation’s HR solution and a recruitment model which sees the recruitment process begin with an eForm. A department wanting to fill a post completes the initial eForm. This is then passed to HR for on-line authorisation and on to marketing who will use the information to create ads for external promotion. The process continues through the interviewing and offer process to on-boarding – all the relevant documents stored centrally and accessible online. And it all began with that first department’s eForm.

If you would like information about how Documation could help your business use eForms, take a look at the Documation website.

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The information services company Experian estimates that councils waste up to £147 million a year through paying bills more than once. They cite examples including that of the London Borough of Islington which recently undertook an internal audit of payments to their thirty main suppliers to discover that ten had been paid twice and two further suppliers paid three times – these overpayments alone totalling £55,000 – and that Leeds City Council had managed to recover £500,000 in overpayments.

So why do duplicate payments happen?

No business wants to pay a bill twice, but it’s a fact of life that duplicate payments are a common occurrence in many organisations – and the larger the organisation, the more prone it seems they are to making duplicate payments.

Partly the fault lies with senior managers who accept that a degree of error is unavoidable, but a host of other reasons have been identified as contributing to duplicate payment, including:

• Duplicate supplier records – it is not uncommon in systems for one supplier to have a number of records, to be referred to variously as with or without the Ltd or Plc, in full or abbreviated format, etc.;
• No clear policy on dealing with non-Purchase Order  invoices;
• Re-issued invoices not picked up on;
• Fraud – whereas the majority of duplicate payments can probably be put down to ‘mistake’, there are undoubtedly attempts by unscrupulous suppliers to defraud through the issue of duplicate invoices, often through varying the name of their company to avoid detection.

And the result?

• The business loses money;
• There is a damaging effect on cash-flow;
• And Accounts Payable (AP) staff are involved in extra work to reclaim identified overpayments.

An Invoice Management Solution – and how it can help avoid duplicate payments

An Invoice Management Solution (IMS), such as Documation’s IMS, automates invoice processing through from data capture, and has key features which can aid detection of duplicate invoices:

• In-built duplicate invoice validation processing using one or a combination of key data values (including supplier number, invoice date, invoice amounts etc.), rejected invoices routed for AP resolution;
• Purchase Order (PO) invoices are matched against the PO – once matched they can’t be ‘matched’ again, and  duplicates are rejected;
• In-built online coding and authorisation processing for non-PO invoices conforming to clearly defined, enforced business processes;
• Authorised users outside the AP department can access documents to settle queries, with a supplier portal an option to enable suppliers to track their own invoice-payment progress;
• In-built alerts ensure discrepancies are resolved within a supplier’s credit terms;
• Powerful reporting tools include duplicate supplier record identification;
• Invoices are ready for payment faster plus automatic posting to an organisation’s finance system means there is less chance of receiving a re-issued invoice in the first place.

The majority of duplicate payments are small in value – but they add up. If you would like more information about how automating your invoice management can help your AP department reduce costs and improve efficiency, take a look at Documation’s Invoice Management Solution.

But even just thinking about clearing out the office can be daunting, not least due to the hundreds of papers that will need sorting – documents such as invoices, receipts, credit card statements, expense forms and letters stored in cupboards, drawers, filing cabinets and off-site.

And it’s not simply a matter of throwing papers into the bin. Office staff such as those in Accounts Payable (AP) will need to take into consideration that some documents need to be stored for several years – and if your business stores a lot of paper documents, that will be a time-consuming task.

A document management solution, such as Documation’s Document Archiving or Invoice Management Solution (IMS) will store all documents online, instantly accessible, and thereby remove the hassle of having to decide between the documents which need keeping and those that can be thrown away.

Below we’ve listed details of some of the solutions that can help to manage and store documents entering organisations, and that could help with your spring clean.

Document Archiving

A document archiving solution, such as Documation’s iRetrieve, offers an easy way to store and retrieve documents, with businesses able to scan and upload both hand-written and typed documents on to the computer system. With documents immediately accessible, there’s no more time wasted in searching for documents. Benefits of a document archiving solution include:

• No requirement to keep paper copies
• Instant access to corporate information
• Faster response to queries
• Seamless integration with back end business systems
• Print or email copy documents can be produced on demand
• Audit trails for every document
• Secure document storage meeting legal and compliance requirements.

Invoice Processing Solution

If one of your main concerns is the amount of time spent in processing invoices, then an invoice processing solution, such as Documation’s IMS, would greatly benefit your business. Solutions like IMS reduce the time and money cost associated with manually processing paper invoices and will help to significantly reduce the cost of storing documents – no more need for off-site storage or for all those filing cabinets taking up vital office space.

In addition, staff will no longer have to spend hours of their time searching for that important document, as everything can be accessed at the click of a button. Benefits of an IMS include:

• Improved supplier relationships
• Improved productivity of the AP team
• Reduced cost and less time required for solving discrepancies
• Improved level of service to internal departments
• Reduced stationery costs.

Procurement Solution

For many procurement departments the requisitioning and ordering of goods and services is a paper-intensive, inefficient and costly process. A procurement solution, such as Documation’s iPurchase, will help to automate and streamline this process.

Many businesses are recognising that there is a need to enhance the speed and effectiveness of their procurement process to help reduce costs. Automating the procurement department will do just this, as well as improve control and help enforce purchasing policies.

Benefits of a procurement solution:

• Simplified purchase requests
• Improved control over the business process
• Reduced costs.

Introducing an automated solution into your organisation will help you to effectively and efficiently process any document that enters your business, which in turn will help to improve the productivity of your staff as well as saving money and time.

And make the annual office spring clean a far easier task.

To find out more about Documation’s solutions take a look at our website www.documation.co.uk or email info@documation.co.uk.

Introducing an automated solution such as Documation’s Accounts Receivable solution, can be used in AR to streamline payment processing; as the solution provides instant access to all documents, including: sales invoices, customer orders, credits, statements, POD documents, picking lists etc.

The solution will significantly shorten the average debtor day and minimise the number of credit notes that need to be sent.

So how does an automated solution such as this work? The solution will be able to capture and archive all AR related documents, and creates a central repository from which all documents can be retrieved. The solution will capture documents in all different formats: paper, fax, email, PDF, word, excel and computer generated documents. This will make the whole process a lot more efficient and reduce the amount of time and cost it takes to process a document.

In a recent survey by Esker, called How to Achieve 100% Electronic AR Invoicing, they found that the elimination of manual processes can cut operating costs by up to 80%. According to Esker, for those AR departments that don’t have an automated solution it takes four minutes to handle a document, two days for transit time and costs $5 to send an invoice; all this adds up to a lot time and money.

Investing in an automated solution will reduce these amounts significantly as well as achieving the following benefits:

• Improved cash flow
• Improved control of key business process
• Reduced average debtor days – faster customer payments
• Enhanced customer relationships
• Reduced operational costs, i.e. time spent searching for invoices and other documents
• Reduced telephone costs – info available instantly meaning there is no need to call back customers
• Minimised customer queries – self service customer portal

Benefits such as these will not only help to improve the efficiency of the AR department, but it will also help to improve customer relationships. With all the details instantly to hand, the finance team can respond to queries immediately without having to locate documents and call them back. Any document stored can be faxed or emailed to the customer, removing the reason to duplicate an invoice and ensuring you are paid on time.

When investing in an automated solution for your AR department you can expect to reduce document handling time by up to 96% according to Esker, this means your AR team will have a lot more time to spend on more strategic tasks. Esker also believes that businesses can see between 40 – 80% reduction cost in sending billing documents and as much as 90% reduction in billing errors and returns. Overall the AR department will become more efficient and the business as a whole will save a lot of money which can be used in other areas of the business.

Businesses that invest in an automated accounts receivable solution, along with a supplier invoice processing solution can gain the benefits of a fully automated P2P system. To find out more about Documation’s AR solution or our supplier Invoice Management Solution please visit our website www.documation.co.uk or email info@documation.co.uk.

For over 11 years the northern based integrated transport authority has been using our Enable solution to electronically capture and store business critical documents. The authority has decided to upgrade to Enable 3.11 to enhance their current functionality and to drive further business efficiencies.

Key Benefits of Enable 3.11

The Enable upgrade will provide the following benefits:

• Lower document processing costs
• Increased productivity
• Enhanced security
• Increased operation flexibility
• Utilise their existing MFD’s as a corporate wide capture platform
• Archive and retrieve documents in their native electronic format
• Provide a simple integrated retrieval mechanism for multiple back office systems

Mick Hollis, Documation Account Manager, who has been working closely with the authority, said: “Companies today are always looking to improve their business processes without the hassle of having to move to a different solution. Ensuring software purchases are future-proof is now a key element during the decision making process. At Documation, we help our customers to get the full potential out of our solutions, both at the point of first purchase and continually down the line; ensuring they can continue to reap the benefits for years to come.”

How Does Documation’s Enable Work?

Managing and processing high volumes of documents can be very time consuming and costly,

Enable provides you with all the performance and features your business needs for a fast and efficient operation. The modules below can be combined and tailored to provide a complete solution for any business application.

Key Benefits of Enable

• Removal of the need to manually process documents : Enable will put the documents in your organisation to work, whatever the format – paper, fax, email, eForms, XML, EDI, COLD and electronic documents
• Instant document retrieval: If you have high volumes of documents to manage in any area of your business, Enable provides all the performance and features you need for a fast and efficient operation
• Improved productivity : Automating some of the processing leave staff free to concentrate on more strategic tasks
• Easy to use: Enable is designed with the user in mind. There are plenty of options to switch between pages quickly, pop-up help tips and hot keys to speed up tasks
• Modular design: The modular design means you only pay for the modules you need, while giving you the option of expanding the system by adding extra functionality as your business grows and changes. New technologies are constantly adapted to improve each module so your system is always “best of breed”
• Improved security: Access can be restricted according to department, role, and operating company. Specific documents can also be marked as confidential upon entry to the solution and can then only be opened by individuals who have the correct security level
• Enhanced management information: Enable provides a rich store of data about your business processes and transactions. This information can be used to produce KPI information and to monitor targets

To find out more about Documation’s Enable please visit our website www.documation.co.uk or email info@documation.co.uk.

Image courtesy of M-Pics FreeDigitalPhotos.net