Not Another Accounts Payable Automation Solution?

The market for accounts payable (AP) automation software is saturated. There are plenty of software solution companies to choose from that cater to SMBs, mid-market or Enterprise. Most are mediocre but there are some great solutions out there. Depending on your company’s accounts payable use case, a software solution may already exist to meet your needs.

So why did we build another accounts payable automation solution in a highly saturated market? It started almost five years ago with a multi-location / multi-entity restaurant franchisee who was running into many problems in their accounts payable department that no other AP solution seemed to be able to solve. They faced unique challenges like ensuring the invoice is being allocated to the correct location as each has its own P&L to managing a complex workflow approval process.

We discovered that there isn’t a software solution in the market designed to meet all the needs of multi-location / multi-entity businesses. The problems with the existing accounts payable solutions were:

1) Property matching: Having an AP solution know which location the vendor’s invoice belongs to. With a human eye, it’s easy to see the address on the invoice and identify it’s for location number 7. However, 99% of AP solutions don’t match to the location making AP teams have to manually adjust.

2) Capture Technology: Most AP solutions use older technology to capture and extract invoice information. The result is that the AP team has to make many manual corrections, once again defeating the purpose of AP automation.

3) Line Item Extraction: Many AP solutions do not have the ability to pick up line items, just the invoice header info. This is a problem for many multi-location operators as they need to allocate those line items to different GL expense codes. Further, the AP solutions on the market do not have the ability to pick up inventory level information from line items like the unit of measurement and item ID.

4) Managing the complex approval process: When you have many locations, you typically have a robust approval process. As your company grows, you need more controls in place to ensure processes are being followed and to reduce fraud. Many existing AP solutions can’t handle the complexities of the approval workflows that are needed for these types of businesses.

5) Splitting an Invoice: Sometimes, companies want to split an invoice amongst many locations. Imagine if you got one invoice to head office but needed to allocate that expense across your stores. Most, if not all, AP solutions, you would have to manually code them or some operators manually fill out the info into Excel and upload it into accounting.

6) Integrating with any ERP or accounting software: Not every AP solution integrates with what your company uses. Some are ERP specific as they only integrate into SAP. With a plethora of accounting systems out there, you also need an AP system that communicates with what your company uses.

7) Handling multi-location / multi-entity data: Being able to push the invoice information correctly into the accounting system at the location or entity level. Not all AP solutions can push the information correctly, resulting in inaccurate financial information in your accounting system.

For many AP solutions, there are still many manual steps you need to take making them more semi-automated than fully automated. As we saw above examples included making you assign the invoice to the approver or choosing which location the invoice belongs to. At a principle level, this didn’t make any sense as AP automation software should fully “automate” the AP process for your AP team to feel the full benefit of increased productivity.

Factura.ai was designed from the ground up to solve the challenges that multi-location and multi-entity businesses face when it comes to accounts payable. We’re helping thousands of locations process AP more efficiently, with more controls allowing organizations to scale.

To learn about how Factura.ai can help your organization, visit Factura.ai and book a meeting today.