Are you running your business with antiquated AP?

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1 Are you running your business with antiquated AP? A MineralTree Topic Paper A guide to advanced solutions that make AP simpler, safer, and more efficient

2 Traditional Accounts Payable (AP) remains an arduous and annoying process that creates unnecessary inefficiency and headaches at thousands of growing businesses. Why? Because the basic tasks of processing and making payments are out of date. Here we explore the challenges of AP and highlight a more modern and efficient alternative solution from MineralTree. AP is a manual, ad hoc, paper-based, and high-risk process Traditional AP involves receiving and manually keying data from paper invoices, chasing approvals through and phone calls, printing paper checks to pay vendors, manually collating checks with printed invoices and purchase orders, tracking down CFOs for signatures, stuffing envelopes, applying postage, and finally, delivering a stack of payments to the post office. If the accounts payable process sounds ancient and arcane, add in the headaches of answering anxious vendor calls ( the check s in the mail! ), replenishing depleted check stock and printing supplies, fixing stubborn printer paper jams, and cleaning up messy toner cartridge explosions. AP anxiety doesn t end when payments are mailed: Did your vendor receive the check on time? Was an invoice accidentally paid twice? And what about that scary article in the New York Times about the latest online fraud scheme? It s clear that the more invoices processed and payments made, the greater the angst and risk to your business. This outdated approach to AP is expensive, wasteful, risky, aggravating and on the wrong side of history. Today s growing businesses demand efficient, finely tuned operations in every department, and the AP department is no exception. Unfortunately, today s AP departments frequently make excuses for their outdated manual, ad hoc, paper-based processes, weak controls, and insufficient awareness of payment risk and fraud. Every month, we issue hundreds of checks, and the resources needed to review, produce, mail, and reconcile those payments is a huge burden it is also an antiquated, expensive process fraught with risk at every step. Ed Mis, VP of Operations, Apnea Care, Williamsville, New York Did they properly reconcile the payment and apply the discount that was promised? Will your annual financial audit receive low marks because proper payment controls were not employed? It isn t broken, so I don t need to fix it. We don t have the disease, so we don t need to find a cure. These are not the mantras of progressive businesses. 2

3 There s no excuse for antiquated AP Here are other excuses that come up when discussing AP and payments processes with CEOs, CFOs, and AP professionals. We don t process that many invoices and payments. It seems like a big investment for very little benefit. Many businesses believe that solutions to improve AP are expensive. You may associate AP improvement with complex IT projects, expensive consultants, long implementation times, extensive training on new software, and a high failure rate. You may believe that without invoice and payment volumes numbering at least several thousand per month, the benefits of improving AP are elusive and intangible. But AP and Payment Automation can be simple, affordable, and easily adopted, even for organizations with lower invoice/payment volumes. It s too much hassle. This is the age of cloud computing, and modern cloud-based business solutions do not require complex implementations, only simple onboarding, which can be accomplished at little to no cost, and often within just a few hours. The simple implementation offered by cloud-based solutions brings the benefits of improved AP and Payment Automation to your business, even if you have low invoice and payment volumes. Why spend money to make payments? You already do. However, these costs are hidden from sight in every step of the manual AP process. Studies by Aberdeen, PayStream Advisors, and other prominent consulting firms show that the cost of manually processing invoices and payments can range from $10 to $15 per invoice and payment. These studies also show that improving AP through technology, such as electronic invoice and payment processing, will lower these costs to less than $4 per invoice. For a business that processes as few as 100 invoices and payments per month AP costs can range from $1,000 to $1,500 per month, utilizing MineralTree Invoice-to-Pay these costs are reduced to less than $400 per month and can save a company up to over $13,000 per year. Controllers or CFOs might argue that those cost savings are modest, and that the headache of implementing a new system is greater than the benefit it delivers. However, advanced solutions cost just a fraction of the overall cost savings the solution will generate. And your business will realize tangible benefits in just one or two months. AP automation grows with your business and is easy to scale. This allows you to grow your business without growing your AP department. For example, a business that processes 1,000 invoices per month can experience savings of up to $132,000 annually. No matter your volume of invoices and payments, there s no reason to continue with today s manual AP processes when a modern, advanced alternative is available, affordable, and easy to implement. 3

4 How can you modernize AP? Modernizing AP brings new efficiency and advanced capabilities to your business. Consider all the time you spend on your manual processes and then consider the alternative. Modern AP Digitizes paper invoices so that they can be stored online and made searchable. Implements web-based processes to streamline approvals and to enable any time, anywhere approvals by key personnel when working remotely, traveling, or even on vacation. Integrates financial accounting and ERP systems directly with bank accounts to enable appropriately-timed vendor pay ments and better control over cash flow. Eliminates paper check writing to save cost and reduce fraud. Proactively notifies vendors of impending payments while electronically transmitting associated remittance detail. Implements financial controls and robust procedures to eliminate internal fraud and mitigate external security threats. The business benefits are real. Modern AP saves you time and money, provides control over your outgoing cash flow, improves your financial controls, and reduces your risk from fraud and inappropriate activity. Modern AP is no longer a nice to have capability. It is an essential. Advanced AP and Payment Automation from MineralTree Affordable, secure, and delightful MineralTree delivers a cloud-based solution that makes AP more efficient, safe, and modern. Our solution, MineralTree Invoice-to-Pay, addresses the inefficiencies and reduces risks in each of the major phases of the AP process. Invoice Capture With MineralTree Invoice-to-Pay, your paper invoices are scanned, searchable with integrated Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and stored online. It s easy to capture electronic invoices received by AP (e.g., from vendors via ) by simply forwarding the to a preset electronic mailbox. Invoices can then be automatically posted as corresponding records in your accounting and ERP systems (e.g., with invoices in Microsoft Dynamics GP and bills in NetSuite) to ensure proper audit trail and recordkeeping. Invoice Approval Once captured, your AP staff can eletronically route selected invoices to other department staff for approval prior to payment. For example, an invoice for marketing services can be routed to the VP of Marketing for approval. 4

5 Your AP staff can review all open invoices at any time, and select them for payment based on your company s cash management strategy. Multiple invoices from the same vendor can be grouped together into a single payment, and payment dates can be scheduled to take advantage of early payment discounts, optimize cash flow, and to minimize vendor disruptions. Your businesses can also establish individual and organizational payment limits and controls to mitigate risk and ensure compliance with audit best practices. Payment approval rules, such as required segregation of duties and dual approvals, ensure that preestablished payment controls are implemented. Payment Execution Payments are made through the MineralTree SilverPay Network. Streamlining payments to vendors, employees, and across bank accounts. The MineralTree SilverPay Network eliminates the hassle and complexity of sending electronic payments and remittance detail to vendors and allows your company to precisely time payments and optimize cash management. When our bank came to us with the option to use MineralTree, everything clicked, and we quickly and easily made the switch. We could not be happier everything remains the same our accounting system, our payments processes, our bank except faster, safer, and more efficient. Ed Mis, VP of Operations, Apnea Care Williamsville, New York Seamless integration with your financial application and bank MineralTree Invoice-to-Pay is unlike any other product in the market today. It is a complete solution that integrates with your current financial accounting and ERP system. It is scalable for any business size, and priced to be affordable to businesses that process as few as 25 payments per month. MineralTree Invoice-to-Pay is built with bulletproof security that guarantees against online payment fraud. MineralTree is tightly integrated with popular financial accounting and ERP applications (such as QuickBooks, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics GP, Intacct, and others). Seamless integration means that bills and invoices entered into your financial application are immediately visible in MineralTree Invoice-to-Pay, where you can trigger the key AP steps of invoice approval and payment processing. When payments are made, MineralTree Invoice-to-Pay automatically syncs payment information back into the financial application, marking the payment closed. MineralTree Invoice-to-Pay is also tightly integrated with your bank, so that all issued payments are made directly against your bank account (unlike other online bill payment systems, which debit your bank account well in advance of payment being sent to your vendor). This capability gives you maximum control over your outgoing cashflow. Money is disbursed from your bank account when you want it. And your vendors receive payments in the shortest possible time. Rapidly implemented, easily affordable Because MineralTree Invoice-to-Pay is a cloud-based solution, getting started is a 5

6 simple matter of validating a few key details of your accounting application and your banking information. Implementing MineralTree does not involve a complex IT project, weeks and months of customization, or hefty implemen-tation fees. It doesn t require extensive training. It s simple, approachable, and effective. MineralTree Invoice-to-Pay is a service priced to deliver rapid ROI, based on your invoice and payment volumes. There are no hefty software license costs, user license costs, or hidden transaction fees -- just a single monthly fee based on your estimated transactions. Guaranteed secure Online corporate fraud, a form of electronic fraud, is rampant and growing. Many businesses do not realize that their business bank accounts have a very limited level of liability protection from electronic fraud -- unlike consumer accounts, which are governed by stronger fraud protection regulations. The security features embedded in MineralTree Invoice-to-Pay enable us to provide you with guaranteed protection against online corporate fraud. But we also include SilverGuard, our payment fraud protection plan, as part of MineralTree Invoice-to-Pay. SilverGuard brings you fraud loss protection up to $100,000 annually, keeping your business protected. Adopt Modern AP today Contact MineralTree today for more information, to schedule a demo, and to see how affordable, secure, and delightful advanced AP and Payment Automation can be all with the proven MineralTree Invoice-to-Pay MineralTree provides the easiest to use Accounts Payable (AP) and Payment Automation solutions for finance professionals at growing organizations. MineralTree streamlines AP, giving customers unparalleled visibility and significant cost savings in an affordable, integrated platform that is guaranteed secure. AP is about payments. And payments attract fraudsters. MineralTree Invoice-to-Pay incorporates a wide range of security features, including two-factor authentication, individual and company payment limits, segregation of duties, dual approval, and integration with your bank s Positive Pay solution to mitigate the risk of internal fraud and online corporate fraud. For more information please visit 6