Right now we are all facing something unprecedented and unplanned for, and recent events have left many accounts payable (“AP”) departments scrambling to adjust and adapt. Mandatory closing of non-essential businesses, and workers advised to shelter in place from home left many enterprises wholly unprepared. The underlying culprit, not surprisingly, was the reliance on paper – specifically paper invoices and paper checks. Organizations that did not previously automate the receipt, processing and payment of invoices are now all struggling to come up with disaster recovery plans and procedures for their AP operations to continue forward.

Over the past could of months, I’ve spoken to a number of AP departments to see how they are handling the current situation. It is definitely a tale of the haves and the have nots. Those that previously automated and eliminated paper invoices and checks are doing pretty well all things considered, and, for them, it is more or less business as usual with respect to their receipt, processing and payment of invoices. One solution provider even told me they had a client phone them up to thank them for helping automate their AP department and put them in a good position to handle the current crisis.

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On the flip side, I also spoke with an assistant controller at one enterprise, and an accounting manager at another, who were both struggling to keep up and adapt. Both of their organizations have all their employees working from home but each needed to drive to their offices and collect the mail to get invoices from their suppliers so they could bring them home, open them up, and manually enter the required information into their accounting/ERP system. Once entered, authorized approvers then had to go in and review the invoices and approve them for payment or, if they had a question or issue with the invoice, call others or send emails to ascertain the information they needed. The two I spoke with also faced issues with respect to cutting checks and paying their suppliers. Once again, checks needed to be manually cut, signed by an authorized signature (who was working from home at a different location), and then placed in an envelope, postage applied (often with stamps that needed to be purchased at a local post office since their postage meters were at their offices) and then placed in a mailbox or dropped off at the local post office.

Everyone right now is figuring out how to get their jobs done while working remotely, and overcoming obstacles in their path. AP professionals are stepping up, as they always do, and doing whatever it takes to get invoices approved and paid on time. Reliance on paper and manual processes in accounts payable has left many exposed unnecessarily. Technology for electronic invoicing, invoice automation, and digital B2B payments is readily available to organizations of all sizes from the smallest to the largest and I expect going forward there will be increased attention being paid by senior management to the manual and labor intensive AP tasks with an eye towards what can be done to automate them going forward.

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