The great thing about having an AP Invoice Processing solution that’s built on top of a enterprise level document management system is its flexibility. I’ve been doing some exploring lately, and I’ve realized that many systems that are solution specific are very rigid–you have to conform your practices to their system, and it’s typical for folks to come up with workarounds, that might be faster, or make more sense for your business procedure, but that end up taking you outside of the system (and doesn’t that defeat the purpose?).
This is especially true when it comes to routing invoices around for approvals. When you come across an invoice that’s a bit wonky, perhaps because of its GL distributions, for example–you don’t want to have that routed for approvals outside of the system–you want to be able to tell the system who to route it to. Something like this is incredibly valuable when it comes to audits, because you need to how that things were done by the book, and that you can prove it.
For example, conditional routing. When an invoice enters the system, you can identify the cost center, so that it’s sent to the appropriate Department Head, who can then determine the GL codes. Or say that you have an invoice enter the system for over $5,000. What you can do is have a rule pick up on that amount, and automatically add a step to the routing, that means not only does the appropriate manager approve the invoice, but so does the Controller.
Sometimes, in real life, there are exceptions that require flexibility. When you look at systems to help you with invoice approvals, it’s important to make sure that they’re built in a way that allows for that flexibility, while maintaining consistency and security.
