Anyone have experience researching and implementing an electronic payment process that they can share? Best practices
Accounts Payable Software
Answers
Can you share more about the kinds and size of transactions you are looking to "electronify"? It makes a difference as to whether they are large company-to-company transactions, smaller high volume B2C transactions or something in-between. A few places to look in the meantime are:
http://www.nacha.org/ and http://www.electronicpaymentscoalition.org/ are good for
But more detail in your post will make it easier to help you out further.
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Large organization. Looking to "electronify" the entire AP process - B2B, B2C, employee reimbursements, Etc... Total expenses in the $10B range.
I will take a look at the links you provided as well.
Thanks Brian.
For employee reimbursements the obvious choice would be Concur or Oracle. They're the go-to choices for large business expense report management and reimbursement, with pretty much every feature you can imagine, plus all the compliance and tools applicable to public companies. For any company under 1000 employees you might try Expensify (http://expensify.com). Most of the same features as Concur (plus a few extras), but packaged and priced for medium-to-small businesses.
Well I have used Sutisoft for much, much smaller companies :). They are great to work with but I have no idea if their stuff would scale for you. https://www.proformative.com/provider/sutisoft-inc.
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Bryan,
I agree wityh yoyur comments about the Sutisoft product. The SutiSoft solution extracts PO, Invoice, and Receipt data from your ERP system and performs the matching function through a matching engine with N-way matching options. Matched data is then sent back to the ERP system for payment.. The solution is scalable to handle small to large customers with 100’s of thousands of invoices. NO problems in scaling!
Steve, I have had experience automating the P-to-P cycle with Lawson, SAP and Oracle. These large systems have much of the process automated through their workflow engines, so adopting additional applications or vendors to help automate usually comes on the front-end and the back-end:
Front-end: Best Practice dictates managing your vendor's adoption of e-file - REQUIRE vendors to comply with e-file submissions (submit packslips, invoices, etc. in electronic form, properly referencing info - PO/Rel#, Vendor ID, etc.)
For smaller companies I have used www.earthclassmail.com to turn non-product/OPEX vendor invoices into trackable pdf docs before AP ever touches a single piece of paper. Read: Eliminate the "hot potato game" ("who's got the vendor's invoice?") - MUST-DO Process fix!
Back-end: With effective Banking solutions, all checking and payment distribution can be cost-effectively outsourced depending on your banking relationship -- my experience has been that my banks have been my ally on deploying the electronic payment disbursement and settlement process, which simplifies the bank recon process as well.
See www.tapn.com for solutions and support materials.
For smaller company solutions a variety of providers have good offerings for use with midrange financial packages such as Infor or even Sage, Great Plains, etc.
We already have most product vendors on EDI. However, we still handle 700,000+ paper invoices annually for operating expenses from small to medium sized vendors, most of which have to be routed for manual approvals. We're looking at scan & capture and electronic workflow solutions such as Readsoft, Hyland OnBase, Basware, etc. Does anyone have comments on those or other suggestions?
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Dipak, I am not trying to oversimplify an answer to your question, but in my years of experience with "bolt-on" or front-end solutions (i.e., your "scan & attach" routable/trackable payment docs), the best choice solution is the short-listed vendors who align with your primary ERP / Workflow solution. I have used HP's solution because of the hardware we installed; I have indirect experience with KOFAX and Readsoft as vendors with Oracle Financials workflow, and the configuration and implementations appeared to be easy to coordinate with the Oracle engine. Hope this helps.
Hi Keith and Dipak,I dont know whether you have heard of Sutisoft, I saw it mentioned in another discussion this week and checked out the demo. The SutiSoft solution automates the complete invoice matching process and integrates with ERP systems (Oracle, SAP, and others). It evaluates the PO, invoice, receipt, and receiving and inspection details and performs the match function. A complex algorithm within the solution performs the matching function and it is intended for large volumes of transactions and can accommodate thousands of invoices at a time. Matching of 10,000 invoices happens in a matter of minutes. There is also a collaboration piece that allows you to work directly with your suppliers to ensure prompt and correct resolution of unmatched invoices including email notifications to all parties. Also, it's a great way to evaluate the performance of your suppliers by looking at metrics such as matching percentage. Security and Compliance features are built into the solution to ensure compliance of approvals and access. Check it out and let me know what you think.
Simon
Simon
Not really the right fit for us. Our procurement system already performs the matching function very efficiently for PO transactions. We're looking for tools to more efficiently get data from paper invoices in to the system, because not all vendors are candidates for EDI, and also to route non-PO invoices for approval electronically rather than on paper.
You may want to consider a broad migration of your paper-based B2B payments to an electronic alternative such as a P-card, ACH, etc, as there are now several innovative, easy to deploy and relatively inexpensive ways to integrate electronic payments into your exxisting ERP/EIPP systems, thereby offering the company the same level of automation it currently enjoys, but also allowing it to send and retrieve all necessary data/information along with the payment. More often than not, the company's suppliers will welcome the receipt of electronic payments and may be willing to absorb some or all of the burdon of the cost of the new payment method (to the extent there is an incremental cost) as this will make their life a lot better as well. Full disclosure: this is exactly what my company does for procurement-heavy companies looking to migrate meaningful levels of their paper-based procurement activities to electronic alternatives. -DML
Dipak. Data capure solution called PsiGen that uses OCR and mouse over capture for scanned documents. They also provide an electronic document
My client is a small business. They would love to have less paper I'm looking for a paperless solution for them that can be used in multiple areas of their operation. Reducing A/P paperwork is good (they do not have POs to match), but also other documents just to reduce the clutter. They use QuickbooksOnline. They would prefer a networked solution.
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Kelly, you may want to launch both of your inquiries as separate inquiries rather than tagged onto this comment stream.
I have a few clients that are small and growing. They are starting to think about getting a little bit of a formal year end review, salary review, 360 degree review process in house. They will only want to do something online, SaaS.
Any suggestions based on what you've used or seen in the past?
This is a very good question. Speaking of which, has anybody had experience dealing with FileBound and integrating that platform to QuickBooks? Does FileBound work for all versions of QuickBooks?
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This is a great question. We are currently looking for an AP solution for small business that integrates with quickbooks. I have looked at Bills.com. If anyone has any feedback as to what works well, I would love to hear it.
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