Fast invoice processing means an invoice is handled in hours instead of weeks: delivered, read, coded, approved and posted without sitting in anyone’s mailbox in between. The interesting part is that the delay is almost never in the software. In this article you can read where the time actually goes, how to remove it step by step, and what fast does not mean.
Contents
Where the time actually goes
Reading an invoice takes seconds. Coding it takes a minute. What takes three weeks is the invoice that arrived in a colleague’s mailbox, was forwarded to someone on holiday, and surfaced when the supplier sent a reminder. Measure your own throughput time and you will usually find that almost all of it is waiting rather than working.
That matters for what you fix first. Faster recognition improves the minute. Removing the waiting improves the three weeks.
How to speed it up
1. One place for delivery
Give suppliers one address and stop accepting invoices in personal mailboxes. An invoice mail address, an upload, a mobile app for receipts and a Peppol connection all land in the same queue. This is the single change that removes most of the waiting, and it costs nothing but discipline.
2. Reading and coding
Character recognition combined with self-learning models pulls the data off the invoice and proposes a general ledger account and VAT code per line. A supplier you book every month needs less and less correction, because your earlier entries are what the models learn from. This is where reading invoice data does its work.
3. An approval route instead of an e-mail
Set the route once, per amount, cost centre or supplier, and every invoice goes to the right person automatically, with a reminder if it stalls. The gain is not that approving becomes quicker; it is that nobody has to chase. See how approval routes for invoices are set up.
4. The hand-over to your accounting package
A connection to your accounting or ERP package means the journal entry arrives with the document attached, instead of being typed over a second time. Where the package supports it you can post the invoice earlier and block it for payment until the route is finished, which keeps the books current during a close without paying too soon.
What fast does not mean
It does not mean posting without a check. An invoice that goes into the books with the wrong coding still has to be corrected, and a correction costs more than the confirmation would have. It also does not mean every invoice runs through untouched: handwritten notes, credit notes and unusual layouts need a person, and that remaining tenth is not a defect but the reason the other nine tenths can be automated at all.
Rules to keep in mind
Two things are regulated and both differ per country. Invoices have to be kept for a statutory retention period, several years in most of Europe, in a form that stays readable and reproducible; digital retention is accepted. And because invoices carry personal data, storing and sharing them falls under the European data protection rules, which ask for secure storage and access limited to those who need it. Check the retention terms that apply where your company is registered.
Fast invoice processing with TriFact365
TriFact365 covers the middle of this chain. Invoices arrive by e-mail, upload, mobile app or Peppol into one queue, are read down to line level and come back as a booking proposal, optionally after an approval route. After your check the journal entry goes to your accounting package with the document attached, and the payment run happens there. What disappears is the typing and the chasing; what stays with you is the decision about what gets posted. Read how that runs from receipt to journal entry, or see which packages connect to your bookkeeping.
Frequently asked questions
Handling an incoming invoice in hours rather than weeks: delivered to one place, read and coded automatically, approved through a set route and posted to your accounting package with the document attached.
Waiting, not working. Reading takes seconds and coding takes a minute, while an invoice sitting in a personal mailbox or with an absent approver takes weeks. Removing the waiting gives a bigger gain than making the recognition faster.
No. The reading and the coding are automatic; the confirmation stays with a person. Posting without a check moves the work to corrections afterwards, which is slower rather than faster.
Two ways. You see your outstanding liabilities as they are rather than three weeks behind, and you avoid late payment charges and lost discounts because invoices no longer pass their due date while waiting for an approval.
No. Pre-accounting software sits in front of it and delivers the journal entry through a connection, so the accounting or ERP package you already use stays in place and keeps doing the payment run.
