-
Unify Finances End-to-End: CapEx, Budgeting, Payments
There are a ton of business process automation (BPA) software solutions on the market. Search for “AP Automation Software,” and you’ll find hundreds of results. With so many options, how can you narrow down your choices if you want to improve your business processes?
One of the biggest potential benefits of automating business processes is that the software makes it easier to create an end-to-end solution for the procure-to-pay cycle. Making your budgeting, capital expense (CapEx) management, procurement, and payments systems work together gives you far more control over the entire process. This is where only a few of the BPA software providers really stand out.
NextProcess offers a true end-to-end solution by integrating CapEx/Budgeting, Procurement, and Accounts Payable software modules. By implementing CapEx, Procurement, and AP software modules from NextProcess together, you’ll get a software solution that works together seamlessly to provide real financial management solutions for mid-market and larger businesses.
Robust Budgeting and Data Tracking
Let’s start with the step that comes before procurement in the procure-to-pay cycle. Budgeting.
If you’re trying to run multiple businesses, track large-scale projects, and manage budgets across an organization using spreadsheets, then there’s a good chance you’ve wondered if there’s an easier way. Especially if you’ve seen news stories about spreadsheet typos—which are found in about 88% of spreadsheets—that cost some companies billions of dollars.
The larger and more complex your business is, the bigger the difference you’ll see when switching to NextProcess. Budgeting features built into our software give you increased control over your financial planning. Plus, you’ll have real-time access to reliable, up-to-date information about the current state of your finances. The system also logs all transaction information, providing a rich data set to use in predictions and planning.
Catch Errors and Fraud Faster
One of the budgeting and financial management features that you’re likely to find particularly useful is the one that double-checks data for inconsistencies. NextProcess CapEx/budgeting software provides layers of oversight to catch potential errors and flag them for attention.
The same features help with catching fraud and internal theft. It’s a lot easier to overlook missing funds or fraudulent requests if employees only see aggregate numbers and everyone is too busy to double-check every detail. With automation software cross-checking data and flagging anything suspicious, it’s much easier to reinforce internal controls.
In addition, the CapEx and procurement modules work together to keep vendors and suppliers honest. The automation system will quickly catch pricing inconsistencies, duplicate invoices, and similar issues. You’ll be able to follow up with vendors to sort out the mistake. And the system will also keep track of error history, so you can flag vendors that consistently alter or mess up orders.
Take Control of Procurement
Moving on in the procure-to-pay cycle, we come to the procurement step. This is where companies typically handle operational expenses (OpEx). In many organizations, CapEx and OpEx are traditionally handled separately. Recently, though, more and more companies are paying closer attention to balancing capital and operational spend.
NextProcess’s CapEx and Procurement modules work seamlessly together to help your company take control of all aspects of purchasing and procurement. You’ll be able to manage capital project expenses and operational expenses together while still maintaining separate budgets.
Being able to look at and manage both budgets side-by-side provides increased oversight and control. Being able to quickly separate them again and budget for each will make it easier to handle taxes since CapEx purchases are depreciating assets and operational expenses are 100% deductible the year you made the purchase.
Robust, Integrated Accounts Payable
NextProcess’s AP software solution stands out in part because it integrates with other software modules so well. In addition, our accounts payable BPA and other software modules work seamlessly with existing ERPs (even tricky ones to integrate with, like NetSuite).
With accounts payable software as part of the end-to-end BPA solution, your company speeds up and streamlines the invoice-to-payment process. Our customers often see dramatic reductions in their P2P cycle times. The average time to process a vendor payment goes from 8.6 days down to 5.4 days. For invoices associated with a PO generated in the procurement system, the software can process payments in 12 hours or less.
The AP module also contributes to providing more accurate and accessible financial data. The software tracks every event and change from intake to payment. Optical character recognition (OCR) technology and NextProcess’s proprietary indexing technology provide guaranteed 99.5% indexing accuracy.
Payments-as-a-Service Solution
A truly end-to-end system makes digital payments fast and easy. The Payments as a Service (PaaS) model is a type of outsourcing that keeps control of payments in-house. Your company maintains control of payments, but instead of managing all the ins and outs of digital payment on your own you’ll outsource part of that process to automation software.
PaaS streamlines payment management because the software provider takes care of storage, networking, software updates, and much more. You’ll benefit from faster payments, lower processing costs, and automated compliance with regulations on a regional, national, and global level.
Working together with the Accounts Payable system and other software modules, PaaS software caps off NextProcess’s end-to-end solution. With this streamlined software system, you’ll speed up and improve processing. Automation software dramatically reduces errors and provides easy access to updated, reliable data regarding company finances. Plus, it’s user-friendly and makes things easier for your employees, who will have time to devote to more interesting and value-adding tasks for the company rather than repetitive data entry and paperwork.
Conclusion
NextProcess offers the only suite of software with modules to power and simplify your capital project management, procurement & purchase orders, accounts payable, travel & expense, and payment disbursements. This is a true end-to-end solution that covers budgeting, project management, purchasing, accounts payable, and payments.
To learn more or schedule a free software demo, contact us today.