Invoice coding, a crucial yet monotonous step in the Accounts Payable (AP) workflow, is notorious for its inefficiencies. On average, processing a single invoice can take up to 10 days, thanks to delayed approvals and decentralized routing for coding questions.
However, this process doesn't have to be a persistent headache. Centime's comprehensive AP automation solution transforms this traditionally manual step, significantly accelerating your invoice processing.
Continue reading to discover how Centime's innovative and digital approach is redefining the landscape of invoice coding.
Why Does Invoice Coding Matter?
Invoice coding in Accounts Payable is akin to organizing a library. Each invoice is a book that needs to be correctly categorized and shelved in order to get to the right place. Just like how books are sorted by genre, author, or topic, AP teams classify invoices based on categories like their cost centers, general ledger codes, and tax requirements.
This meticulous categorization, like a well-organized library, ensures that financial information is easily accessible, trackable, and managed efficiently within an organization. Centime understands just how critical – and painstaking – this manual process can be. That’s why we’ve designed an AP automation solution to handle invoice coding and make your AP workflow more agile.
Understanding Traditional Invoice Coding Challenges
Invoice coding can be a demanding and repetitive task for AP staff, requiring careful attention and precision. As your business grapples with more invoices, the process can become even more cumbersome and require more intricate coding. These are just a few of the issues that can arise with invoice coding, others include:
- Errors: Manual data entry is not only labor-intensive but also prone to human errors. The risk of mistakes only grows as invoice volume rises.
- Inconsistency: Inconsistent invoice coding practices can lead to errors in financial reporting and further complicate your expense tracking.
- Inefficiency: Manual invoice coding demands a lot of time from staff to review and code invoices by hand. This can cause payment delays, hindering your cash flow, and takes time away from higher value tasks.
- Siloed Data: If your invoice coding system doesn’t integrate with your financial systems, then you’re impeding data flow and preventing timely financial analysis.
- Compounding Effects: These issues only compound as your business scales. This highlights the need for more efficient, automated solutions.
Centime's Invoice Coding Use Cases
Centime's approach to AP automation directly confronts and resolves these challenges. It reduces manual input, streamlines your AP process, and enhances your invoice capture and coding accuracy.
The best part? The system uses AI to adapt to and learn from user interactions and corrections, to consistently improve its coding suggestions. Now that you’ve gotten an intro into Centime’s invoice coding, let’s dive into several different use cases.
1. Aggregate Capture: Coding Simple Invoices
Say you have an invoice for office supplies from Staples. In order to process this invoice, you must capture the total invoice amount, code it once, and then post it back to your accounting system.
Centime’s invoice coding seamlessly handles this use case by automatically scanning your invoice, pulling the necessary information and coding it appropriately. As a result, your AP team has more time to focus on more complex, strategic tasks.
2. Aggregate Capture: Coding a User-Divided Invoice
Now, there may be times where you need to divide an invoice and split its costs between two departments.
For example, the above invoice is for a phone bill from Verizon. Say you need to code this invoice between your sales and marketing teams based on a specific amount that you want to define.
Centime’s AP automation solution will automate this process by using OCR and AI to accurately capture the invoice amount. You can then use our robust tools to quickly split and code the invoice.
3. Line-Level Capture: Coding Line Specific Invoices
If you receive an invoice and need to code each line differently, then you’re going to need an AP automation system like Centime that offers line-level invoice capture and coding. In some cases, you may need to even split a single line and code it in different ways.
In the case of the invoice pictured above, we’ll need to capture all of the lines items and then code some lines as R&D hosting while others need to be coded as R&D software. This is where Centime's line-level precision shines through.
4. Line-Level Capture: Processing PO-Based Invoices
For PO-based invoices, you’ll need a solution to help match the invoice with the proper PO and receipt, manage discrepancies, and approve invoices and payments.
For both 2-way (PO-Invoice) and 3-way (PO-Receipt-Invoice) matching, Centime will automatically link the captured invoice lines to the correct PO lines, and check for any price, and quantity mismatches that are outside of user-defined thresholds.
Mismatch resolution workflows make it easy for users to review and resolve any discrepancies, so that all your PO-based invoice processing is a breeze.
Improve Your Invoice Coding with Centime
Now that we’ve covered the various use cases for Centime’s invoice coding, it’s time to dive into the benefits.
- Automated coding for simple and complex use cases, that learns and improves over time.
- Full, automated support for PO-matching.
- Powerful toolset and workflows to resolve any discrepancies and routing for approval.
Centime’s Innovative Invoice Coding Features
Our robust AP automation solution boasts some of the most advanced and innovative features, including:
- Intuitive Interface: Centime's user-friendly interface is about more than just aesthetics; it's an approach to simplifying coding tasks. Our platform offers enhanced dropdown menus for easier selection; strong search capabilities to quickly find information; and dynamic table heights for better data viewing. The platform also provides easier navigation to minimize unnecessary clicks.
- Dedicated Coding Tab: No more juggling tabs and windows. Centime's interface offers everything your team needs in one place. This makes multitasking a breeze and provides better context. Our dedicated coding tab provides full visibility into the source document and line level detail, coupled with powerful features like bulk edits.
- Keyboard-Controlled Experience: Navigate the coding labyrinth with the grace of a pianist. Centime’s keyboard-friendly interface allows you to code using the keyboard, eliminating the need for constant mouse wrestling.
- AI-Powered Predictions: Let the system do the heavy lifting. Centime leverages AI and past data to predict coding based on your patterns to make your invoice processing more efficient and intuitive.
Final Thoughts: Centime’s Invoice Coding
Centime's proactive approach tackles AP challenges, ensuring precision and efficiency. This isn't just a tool; it's a catalyst – one that can move your business away from tedious work and into better record-keeping.
Test out the power of Centime and see how you can maximize efficiency and speed in your invoice processing today.
