Discover how Lockstep Receivables can help you ensure invoice accuracy by clicking here.
James Grady
Director of Content Development
Lockstep Receivables
Invoice accuracy is a necessity to ensure that your invoices are paid on-time. Inaccuracy can lead to invoice disputes and delays in payment. In turn, payment delays reduce cash-on-hand, increasing days sales outstanding (DSO). In the current environment, this is a situation many companies cannot afford as they focus on cash management to ramp up operations. Simply put, accurate invoices keep the cash pipeline flowing.
Here’s how to ensure all invoices are accurate to avoid late payments and disputes:
Create Accurate Invoices
Creating accurate, manual invoices is a challenge for many companies. Creating accurate, manual invoices from scratch is an error-prone process. Errors can result from incorrectly transcribing data from shipping tickets, price lists, purchase orders, customer files and bills of lading. Distractions, paper files, and incomplete information make creating accurate manual invoices a daunting challenge.
Invoice templates can help reduce the opportunities for manual errors. A template with basic information already filled in reduces transcription errors, missing information, and the amount of time required to generate manual invoices.
Well Organized Invoices
In addition to errors and missing information, invoice that are cluttered, poorly organized, and difficult to read and understand can delay processing and payment. Make sure your invoices are clean, and easy to read. Ask co-workers outside of accounts receivable (AR) to review your invoice template and make suggestions to improve clarity and readability. Invoices that are easy to read and understand will reduce disputes and processing problems and increase on-time payments.
Sending Timely Invoices
In an office with manual AR processes, invoicing is juggled with other competing priorities. Instead of making invoicing a top priority, manual workflows often “batch process” invoicing, invoice once a week (or less frequently), or fit it in when time permits.
This haphazard approach has been made even more complicated by hybrid and remote office setups, requiring in-person “print and mail” invoice processes. Manual invoicing is more difficult without access to paper files and people at the office. Not sending timely invoices is a big problem for many companies, which can cause a flow of back-ups across the collections process, increasing DSO at the same time.
Automate Invoicing
Automating AR and invoicing with a connected accounting solution can reduce errors, disputes, and DSO, while improving on-time payments. Through automating your invoice processes, transcription errors and missing information are eliminated. Invoicing information is drawn automatically from electronic files for shipping, pricing, customer master data, and other key sources. Financial and ERP software are also automatically updated, eliminating the risk for data inaccuracy through data entry.
Automation ensures that invoices are accurate for on-time payment, while increasing efficiency, reducing errors and disputes, and enhances customer experience. Invoices are created automatically as goods ship, eliminating needless delays so the cash pipeline keeps flowing.
Learn How Lockstep Receivables Helps You Ensure Invoice Accuracy
Lockstep Receivables is a modern, 100% cloud-based AR automation system that integrates seamlessly with Acumatica, Sage Intacct and Sage 100, allowing you to consolidate your collections workflow and better enforce accuracy across every invoice.
About Lockstep
Award-winning, Lockstep connects the world’s finance teams so they can work better together. Founded in 2019, Lockstep eliminates cash traps and leaks created from manual synchronization of books between B2B trading partners. Based in Seattle, Lockstep’s connected accounting cloud empowers trusted, compliant accounting relationships between businesses of all sizes. High-performance companies large and small run their collections with Lockstep.
Click here for a quick Product Tour of Lockstep Receivables, and to discover more about how this solution will work for you.