Digital Digest: Invoicing Automation
What should be the key considerations for automating the invoicing process?
Invoicing records the transaction between a buyer and seller, making it a critical element of the accounting process.
This documentation ensures that businesses get paid, and clients get the goods and services they’ve paid for.
Sounds simple, right? Not entirely.
With manual invoicing, there’s a lot of room for errors. The process of invoicing can be extremely time-consuming, especially with a small team.
There’s also the risk of human mistakes causing incorrect, missing, or late payments, costing your business valuable money.
When it comes to setting up your invoicing processes, automation is the way to go. It means improved accuracy, larger volumes of processing and money saved.
However, it shouldn't be a one-size-fits-all model.
For the best results that are customised to your business model, it’s important to investigate the different anomalies that come with the invoicing process.
Here are just a few considerations that need to be examined before automation can be applied to the invoicing process.
Can automation be integrated into the current system?
To automate your invoicing processes, integration with your company’s existing systems and software must be achievable.
The automation processes must be able to import data such as supplier information, product details and pricing, and export these invoices to the accounting software for record-keeping.
Therefore, it’s important that the invoicing system can ensure a seamless and accurate data transfer.
That means investigating what integration options are available and what’s going to work best for you.
What security measures need to be considered?
With the amount of sensitive financial information involved in the invoicing process, it’s important to remember how security is a crucial asset.
Strong security measures such as password protection, encryption, firewalls and secure servers ensure that potentially vulnerable data like credit card numbers, bank account details and personal information are all protected.
Is there the capability to handle multiple currencies, languages and units of measurement?
When organisations work with a broad range of suppliers there are often different approaches to invoicing with include using different currencies, different languages and different units of measure.
Based on the volume of these, it may be worth configuring your automation solution to cope with these differing requirements.
Ultimately, the automation process must adapt to the needs of the company and their suppliers.
Will the automated system be scalable?
When your business goes through growth, your automated invoicing process needs to be scalable.
Therefore, you need to consider the longevity of the system; will it be able to handle changes as the company grows?
An increasing number of invoices, customers, and products/ services all need to be accounted for in an automated invoicing system.
Latest developments in workplace tech 🤖
McDonald's Has Opened Its First Largely Automated Restaurant in USA
McDonald's has opened its first mostly non-human-run venue in Texas. Customers are served food via conveyor belts, and employee/client interactions are limited with automated drive-throughs and kiosks. McDonald's is testing this unique location for speed and accuracy, catered to customers wanting to take their food to go.
Our Take: A Big Mac brought to your table by a conveyer belt might seem a little bizarre, but it should be no surprise that a corporation as large as McDonald's is finally putting the 'fast' in fast food. Industries all over the world are turning to technology to speed up their production, so it makes sense that McDonald's are tipping their toes into automation with this venue. In fact, we should expect to see a lot more of this if the project is a success!
Global Hospitality Businesses Turning to Technology to Combat Labour Shortages and Financial Struggles
Higher inflation, a lack of staff and general economic uncertainty has caused restaurants to struggle massively. Therefore, a majority of individuals in the hospitality industry have turned to implementing restaurant management systems. The e-commerce system provider Lightspeed has found that using these systems has allowed those in the hospitality industry to do 'more with less'.
Our Take: With the current cost of living crisis in the UK, more and more bars, cafes and restaurants are closing every day. It's reassuring that the hospitality industry are finding a way to combat economic turmoil by utilising technology such as restaurant management systems. These sorts of management systems have a proven track record in other industries for reducing costs, so it's a sensible idea for hospitality industries to follow suit.
UK Government Pledges to Fund World's First Self-Driving Bus
£81 million in combined government and industry funding has been awarded to an Edinburgh self-driving bus service. This comes alongside six other automated forms of transport backed by the government and industry, forming the most advanced set of commercial self-driving transport services in the world. Passengers can be expected to board this innovative bus in Spring this year.
Our Take: The future is now! We're very excited at the thought of self-driving vehicles, and it's great to learn that the general public will get to experience them for themselves. The UK is truly making waves in the automation world, and it's thrilling that the government is willing to fund innovative projects such as this.
Want to learn more?
Our latest episode of the TWT podcast is with Spectrum's very own Rob Cavill, and we discussed how SMEs can keep up with changing technologies and apply them to their business. Click the link to subscribe if you aren't already!
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