Receiving invoices digitally: coordinate the flow!

Receiving invoices digitally is the norm these days. The days when purchase invoices arrived by regular mail are behind us. In recent years, we have taken a big step forward: the flow of incoming invoices has largely been digitized. This is just as well, as many companies have seen this flow increase due to increased activity and growth. However, receiving invoices digitally also brings a new shortcoming: how do you coordinate the flow? From blockchain to supply chain standards (such as DICO and UBL), a range of promising initiatives have passed in review. And yet many companies are still struggling with challenges. Currently, you can receive invoices digitally, but how do you process them easily and quickly? In this blog, we will help you on your way with 5 tips!

1. Get invoices in the right place

If you want to receive invoices digitally and process them quickly, be straightforward with your suppliers. Ask them to send invoices only to an e-mail address you specify, possibly with (extra) information that is important for you to process or book the invoice quickly. This way, you ensure that purchase invoices all arrive in one place, so you can process them in the same way.

2. Provide a good sorting method

When e-mail messages arrive in your invoice mailbox, it’s helpful to process them automatically as much as possible. How to do this? For example, by coming up with a smart solution to filter out spam and non-invoices. But also by combining or splitting different types of attachments in the right way. If you have a good system for this, this processing step will hardly cost you any time.

3. Create a safety net for when something goes wrong

Even if you have a sophisticated system on the front end, you always run the risk of an unexpected or unwanted message arriving. Receiving invoices digitally is great, but it also means that you as the recipient never have complete control over what someone else sends you. That’s why you need a safety net that detects such slipped errors and shows them to you.

4. Install a system that allows you to handle exceptions easily

If you have to deal with a discrepancy, you need to be able to communicate easily with your supplier to ensure that things do go well next time. Some systems allow you to easily contact your supplier in exceptional cases. You can also easily create a new creditor the first time they send you an invoice. If you want to receive invoices digitally and process them efficiently, such a system is actually indispensable!

5. Educate your colleagues

Do you work with multiple branches? Or do many departments within your organization purchase from different suppliers? Then you’ve probably noticed more than once that purchase invoices are not sent to your invoice mailbox, but to your colleagues. Usually, this is out of force of habit. However, it is not always desirable. As a professional in financial administration, you want to receive and process invoices digitally – and that’s only possible if the entire process is streamlined. Therefore, have your colleagues ask suppliers if they can always send invoices to the central e-mail address, so that they arrive at the same place.

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Receiving invoices digitally: how to ensure fast, automated processing?

Many organizations use Outlook for sending and receiving emails. This application offers quite a bit of functionality that allows you to at least partially automate the points mentioned above. But if you want to receive and process invoices digitally in a jiffy, you may prefer a more advanced solution, such as the smart Whitevision SMART E-mail handler. It sorts, processes, filters, combines and splits incoming e-mail messages automatically and quickly, after which any OCR solution on the market can process them. You can very easily install and activate the SMART E-mail hand ler and then benefit from all the knowledge that fellow companies have already gained while using this product. The entire user community is your source of knowledge, so to speak. Receiving and processing invoices digitally is thus enormously simplified, leaving you time for tasks that give you more satisfaction. Do you want to achieve great success in coordinating the flow of purchase invoices? With our SMART E-mail handler it is possible – even if you are not (yet) using Whitevision’s OCR solution. Want to know more? Please feel free to contact us!

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