For many organizations, accounts payable approvals can become quite laborious and time-consuming as there are always some approvers who hoard bills on their desk with the intention to look through them when the moment is right, or lose important documents in their overflowing inboxes. That means there’s no chance of getting the big picture regarding company expenses without putting manual work in – and payments are often late.
However, it doesn’t have to be like this! By using the right tools to extend the QuickBooks Online capabilities, you can improve this situation drastically. Receipt Bank + ApprovalMax enable access to real-time verified data that can be used for spend control, reporting and cash flow forecasting.
The seamless integration between these two apps and QuickBooks Online make paper documents obsolete and, thereby, helps avoid delays and increase the overall efficiency.
Here are the 5 top benefits you will enjoy after implementing the app stack:
- No paper documents mean less delays and errors throughout the entire process
- Data accessibility at any time from any device: everything is under control and on the surface
- Centralized spend control through approval automation
- Full data and process automation for accounts payable to establish actionable data
- Approvals taken out of QuickBooks Online: sensitive financial data is protected, and an unlimited number of users can approve bills in ApprovalMax according to predefined criteria
If you want to learn more about ApprovalMax and how they help to simplify the manual approval process for nonprofits, check out our on-demand webinar, "Bill Automation Tech Stack: Establishing proper financial controls for accounts payable" here.
This is how it works:
Digitizing invoices
The first step of end-to-end automation is the creation of digital bills: Receipt Bank extracts the relevant invoice data, enters this information into the fields of a digital bill and then attaches a scan of the original invoice. These digital bills including their attachments are subsequently published to ApprovalMax for authorization.
Alternatively, bills can be created directly in ApprovalMax by authorized users like suppliers or contractors. For this, all the relevant information such as supplier name and inventory items is automatically synced from the cloud accounting system to enable the same user experience as if working in QuickBooks Online.
Both invoice digitization methods prevent unauthorized bills in the accounting system and shield sensitive accounting data from users who submit bills.
Validating data
No matter which way bills arrive, after entering ApprovalMax they will be reviewed and coded by an accountant first. At this point, the accounts and tracking categories are checked to ensure that the spend allocation is correct.
After this initial control, usually performed by the accountant, bills are routed to the responsible budget holders on the client side. ApprovalMax runs a fully automated multi-step and multi-role authorization process which is based on one or several criteria pulled from the accounting system (supplier, amount, GL code, tracking category, etc.). The highly flexible approval matrix can easily be extended to suit growing businesses with increasingly complex spend tracking patterns and a rising number of approval criteria that need to be accounted for.
Pushing approved bills to QuickBooks Online
After full authorization, outstanding bills are pushed to QuickBooks Online marked as ready to be paid. Any bills that have already been paid before approval will be published to the accounting platform together with the payment information. An audit report that captures the authorization history including approver comments is created automatically and attached to each bill; it can be viewed directly in the accounting system.
If you want to learn more about ApprovalMax and how they help to simplify the manual approval process, check out our on-demand webinar, "Bill Automation Tech Stack: Establishing proper financial controls for accounts payable" here.
Author Bio: Konstantin Bredyuk, Director of Product at ApprovalMax
With roots in business process management and optimization software development, Konstantin Bredyuk has undertaken hundreds of product implementations for ApprovalMax clients worldwide.
Numerous organizations have consulted Konstantin about bill automation and spend control app stacks, with business profiles ranging from SMBs to large accounting and advisory practices.