Good reasons to have an invoice policy
In its no-nonsense way, the government of the State of Minnesota lays out the reason for their Invoice Payment Policy as succinctly as just about anyone: “…increase the efficiency of the payment process and eliminate redundant and unnecessary steps for approval...” As Concur puts it in a new whitepaper: Taking the Pain out of Accounts Payable Management, “…in the absence of a policy, organizations are in the wilderness without a map.” So here are five of the steps Concur charts on the road out of that wilderness:
- Keep the policy clear and concise and to the point: Make sure the language in there is only what’s necessary. Check and re-check that it’s easy to read and tightly focused. And if part of the policy doesn’t seem to be working well, it’s OK to jump in and revise it, even after publication.
- Invite participation: Get team members from other operations and departments involved in creating the policy. They know what challenges they face and what will look confusing from their perspective – that will strengthen the final document. And if they learn more about the process from Accounts Payable’s side, they’ll be more likely to buy in and support the policy.
- Maintain consistency: The best rules apply to everybody equally – they’re simpler to enforce that way, and if everybody feels the policy is fairly written and applied, they’re much more likely to accept it.
- Make all policies easy to find: A hidden policy is a policy no-one follows. Some ways to make sure yours is visible include emailing it to all of your employees; print a copy for everyone involved in handling invoices and post it on bulletin boards or your intranet. Most employees want to do the right thing – making sure they have a copy of a clear, simple policy helps them, and you.
- Consider helpful software tools: A good vendor invoice and payment request policy can take you out of the wilderness, and it also opens the door to the next level. Technology now offers tools that can save time and help you manage the documents from the purchase to the end of your company’s retention period. Automating accounts payable in the cloud saves time, improves accuracy, reduces late payments and frees up more bandwidth to focus on what matters most. When you choose a solution that also works with your mobile devices, managers can approve invoices from anywhere, anytime, and that cuts delays even more.
Make sense? The best invoice policies are the ones that make sense to both employees and management, are clear, fair and easy to find, and are built right into an automated solution. You can get more tips on creating an invoice policy, and a template that makes it easy to craft a good one, in the Concur whitepaper here.