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The Benefits of Using Payment Disbursement and Accounts Payable Automation Software
Every company has expenses. You’re paying employees, paying for products and services, replacing office equipment, and many other routine expenses. Managing regular payments for salaries, utilities, product invoices, and other expenses becomes more challenging as your company grows.
A disbursement management solution and accounts payable automation software enable more control over cash flow. By using both these software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions together, you’ll get better insight into overall cash flow than AP automation can provide on its own. You’ll also be streamlining the payment process and making it easier to manage. Plus, implementing these SaaS solutions strengthens financial controls and visibility at the same time.
What’s the Difference Between Disbursement and Payments?
While there are technical differences between payments and disbursements, the terms are often used interchangeably in everyday communication. Payments occur when a company pays out money, typically for a service or product (e.g. paying an invoice for the purchase of copy paper or paying employee salaries). Disbursements involve cash or cash-like money transfer from the company to a third party (e.g. disbursing cash for an authorized expense).
In this article, we’ll be talking about two types of software-as-a-service solutions related to payments and disbursements. NextProcess’ AP Automation Software gives you increased control over and insight into your accounts payable process. It improves the entire AP workflow and allows auto-processing and payment for up to 90% of your company’s invoices.
NextProcess’ payment solutions are a way for you to outsource different types of payment disbursement. It ensures that your company sends out all payments securely, on time, and to the right people. You can implement either of these software solutions on their own or together.
Accounts Payable Software Benefits
Automating your company’s accounts payable process saves both time and money. It speeds up transaction times, reducing the average cycle time for invoices to just 5.4 days. Compared to manual processing, fully automated AP processing saves an average of $14.93 per invoice.
The benefits of AP business process automation (BPA) don’t stop there. Automating also lets you cut down on paper use. The software automatically tracks all your invoices and sends approval reminders, so you never fall behind on payments again. BPA software for managing accounts payable also improves your data capture and makes accessing vital data about cash flow easy. Improving visibility into the financial process supports strategic decision-making. Plus, AP automation software is secure, accessible, and user-friendly. It’s also flexible, customizable, and easy to implement, making it simple to bring all these benefits into your company.
Payments as a Service Benefits
Payments as a Service (PaaS) systems provide companies with a flexible, efficient way to handle payment disbursement. Rather than managing all your payments directly in-house, PaaS solutions let you outsource the logistics of digital payments to a software company. You’re still managing payments through the software, but all you need to do is input data and the software company handles security, software updates, and payment logistics.
Benefits of payment disbursement through software-as-a-service providers include faster payment times. Much like AP software solutions, PaaS systems keep track of payment deadlines and make sure you’re paying on time or even early (depending on your settings and preferences). This type of payment disbursement can also cut costs, tighten security, improve vendor relationships, and make cash flow data more easily accessible.
A Note on CapEx
So far, we’ve been talking mostly about operational expenses. Capital expenses involve payments as well, though, and they deserve some attention when talking about payments and disbursements. It’s a good idea to keep OpEx and CapEx budgets separate, but you need to take both into account when managing company cash flow.
You can automate capital project management and CapEx expense tracking with NextProcess’ Capital Management Software. This software makes it easy to consolidate and standardize capital expense and capital project management across your company. The tools make it much simpler for your company’s employees to collaborate and stick to approved CapEx budgets.
The Powerful Advantages of Aligning Software Solutions
Mixing and matching software can work, but it’s not the best solution for automating your business processes effectively. Automating and digitizing your financial processes using modules from the same Software-as-a-Service company makes the process simple and unlocks important advantages.
There are 5 Big Advantages to Choosing a BPA Software Suite:
- No Software Conflicts—you don’t need to worry about issues transferring files between software programs when the programs are made to work together. Plus, NextProcess integrates seamlessly with ERPs.
- Simple Software Collaboration—when using multiple software solutions, NextProcess makes it easy to click between programs. For example, you could easily follow an invoice from the AP software to the Payment Disbursement software with just a few licks.
- Ease of Implementation—implementation is much easier if you get all your software solutions from the same supplier rather than having multiple suppliers implementing software.
- Simplified Learning—it’s much easier to learn different programs in the same software suite than to learn several completely different programs. This makes it easy for employees in the AP department (for example) to learn to use the CapEx software as well.
- Streamlined Customer Service—if you need help with your software, it’s much easier if you can just contact one software supplier rather than trying to coordinate with several.
NextProcess Can Help
When you’re looking for an inclusive solution to streamlining payment disbursement and managing cash flow, NextProcess can help. Implementing our Accounts Payable and Payment Disbursement solutions makes managing payments simple. You can add on Capital Expense Management solutions for managing CapEx, and/or get the Purchase Order Module as well and automate your entire Procure-to-Pay process.
Contact us today to set up a free demo so you can see any of our software modules in action. We can answer questions about customizing software solutions, ERP integration, and anything else you might be wondering about.