3 Keys for Improving AP Processes and Reducing Late Construction Payments

The accounts payable process can easily become bottlenecked and increase the time it takes to pay subcontractors and vendors. To improve the AP process, it's important that we take a close look at the best available tools and how they are used in the process.

1. Invoice Scanning

Getting incoming invoices into the accounting system is a big source of delay. For a long time, the best solution was scanning and capturing with optical character recognition (OCR) software. While it was an improvement over hand keying everything, it wasn’t that great at reading handwriting. For example, it had difficulty distinguishing “O” from “0,” so you still needed a lot of manual intervention to catch and correct errors. You also needed to do quite a bit of work on the front end prior to scanning.

However, with more CPU (central processing unit) power and machine learning, these systems are improving. And they will get smarter and smarter over time, moving more towards what I’d call ICR —intelligent character recognition. There’s still work on the front end to get to 99 percent accuracy, but for organizations with a lot of paper invoices, it’s a worthwhile investment.

2. Invoice Workflow

The approval process is another source of delay, especially when you’re pushing paper from person to person. Most companies have several layers of approval, but at least they’re usually located in the same building.

Construction tends to have even more approvers, some of them out in the field. Automating this workflow is a big win. You can stop moving paper around and making people come to where the paper is. Since it all lives in the cloud, project managers and superintendents can do their approvals from the field. Approval no longer has to be sequential; it can be concurrent so no one approver holds up the chain. With the added visibility and control of a cloud system, you may even be able to cut back on the number of approvers.

3. Payments Automation

Most businesses still make about 50 percent of their payments by check. In construction, the percentage tends to be much higher; in fact, it’s not unusual to see companies that are 100 percent check. In some ways, it makes sense. In the past, adding electronic payments — card, ACH, and wire — meant adding another workflow for each, along with time consuming supplier enablement processes. Construction companies already have lien releases and verification of completion on top of the basic invoice approval process. Why add even more layers?

Now, fintech companies are pulling together all the payment types in one workflow and using cloud networks to intelligently route payments by the most advantageous method—card first for rebates; then ACH for suppliers that won’t take a card, and e-check for any holdouts that won’t take either. They even handle supplier enablement and error resolution. This is probably the easiest place to get started with AP automation, because it only takes about a month to implement, doesn’t impact anyone outside of AP, and pays for itself quickly with cost savings and card rebates.

Recently, Nvoicepay and Viewpoint partnered to provide automated payments to contractors using Viewpoint’s Vista ERP solution. Trimble ePayments, powered by Nvoicepay is an integrated solution that transforms how Vista users manage their accounts payable processes by unifying payments into a single workflow that facilitates timely payment approvals.

Contractors who use automated payments have seen an immediate return on investment by increasing efficiency. By saving time and streamlining processes, Trimble ePayments helps boost contractors’ bottom lines.

The Trimble ePayments solution saves customers hours in paperwork, check distribution, and bank reconciliation time. The decrease in processing and management time provides greater ability to consolidate disconnected AP payment processes, leading to greater visibility into and control over construction projects.

With labor shortages across all trades, and subs getting squeezed with onerous terms, speedier payment can give you an edge in attracting the best subcontractors and keeping them engaged. And, with boomers aging out of the industry and millennials coming in, there’s a need to not only do more with less, but to do it more efficiently.