To speed up a company's business processes, a paperless office is essential, as it provides a better overview and enables more efficient work. Digital invoice processing is an important aspect of optimization and a cornerstone in the digitalization of a company. It improves workflows as it enables flexible processing and simple organization, storage and management of data. In order to work in a cost-saving and environmentally friendly way, the first step should be to digitize your incoming invoices.
1. manual invoice processing - time to digitize incoming invoices?
For many employees, receiving invoices in paper form is still part of their normal working day and is indispensable. However, working with paper invoices is not only uneconomical, but also not particularly environmentally friendly. Finding digital solutions for work processes and automating invoice receipt, among other things, is therefore both economically and ecologically more sustainable.
Here are all the facts about manual invoice processing:
- High paper consumption
Several copies of an invoice are often printed out and circulated within the company. - Time required
In contrast to digital invoice processing, manual invoice processing is lengthy and inefficient; the processing time can take up to 14 days per invoice and could be better spent on other tasks. - Disorganization
Employees often do not know the status of an invoice or which department it is in. This leads to delays and errors in processing. - Missed payment deadlines
Inthe worst-case scenario, theexcessively long processing time can lead to payment deadlines not being met, which can result in reminder fees. - Media discontinuities
Work processesare complicated by media discontinuities, as invoices received by email are often printed out and processed internally on paper. - High personnel costs
Theerror-prone system requires a great deal of effort to correct invoices, which takes up a lot of time and causes personnel costs. - Loss of cash discount
By exceeding cash discount periods, companies risk losing their cash discounts. There is a risk of losing cost savings and discounts.
2. digital invoice receipt: the situation in Germany
More than 99% of the economic market in Germany consists of SMEs, and over 2 million companies are micro-enterprises. Fortunately, more and more companies are digitizing their office and administrative processes and moving away from paper-based workflows. A Bitkom study has shown that only one in four companies still make extensive use of paper in their day-to-day business. However, small and medium-sized enterprises are the least digitized - this is where SMEs have an important competitive advantage.
However, the willingness to invest in the digitization of their own work processes and thus also in digital invoice processing is increasing. More than 87% of all companies have already invested in the digitalization of their business and administrative processes in the past. In 2021, four out of ten companies invested in the digital office and more than 44% stated that they would invest in digital alternatives in the future. Only 6% of all companies surveyed stated that they had no interest in digitalizing their processes. However, in the context of the pandemic and due to technological progress, investing in digitalization has become increasingly important. It is particularly important for small and medium-sized companies to work efficiently and in a future-oriented manner, as digitalization can save costs and time. Productivity is increased with the help of automated processes. Anyone who has not yet addressed the topic of digitization can start by digitizing their own invoice receipt as a first step. This is because digital invoice receipt is an easy process to implement, yet it is central to companies and quickly pays for itself.
3. what are the advantages of digitizing incoming invoices?
A digital invoice receipt has a number of positive aspects that benefit not only the company itself, but also its employees. That's why it's worth digitizing incoming invoices - here are the advantages:
- Time savings
Bycentralizing the email inbox, all key people have immediate access to the digital invoices. This speeds up work processes enormously and results in a shorter processing time than is the case with paper invoices. Invoices are often sent to the wrong addressee - a lot of time can pass before the document arrives at the correct place within the company. Central e-mail access speeds up this process without media disruptions.
- Fewer errors
Paper invoices often pass through many hands and several internal departments. It is easy for errors to creep in during invoice processing. This is minimized by digital invoice processing. Manual work processes generally involve a higher error rate on average and are less precise. Digital processing is far more accurate and reliable. With the help of OCR technology (Optical Character Recognition), the invoice data can be read with the utmost precision and there are no transmission errors. - More reliability
Ifthe tax office carries out a tax audit, all documents can be viewed in full and digitally - this prevents the stress of tediously searching for documents and leaves a good impression on the auditor. - Better organization
Digitizing incoming invoices means being able to carry out continuous bookkeeping. This eliminates the need for tedious filing and archiving at the end of the accounting period. This makes the classic month-end closing less time-consuming, as the preparatory work has already been done (manually or automatically). - Environmental friendliness
Paper consumption is always associated with a burden on nature and the environment. Industrial forestry, water consumption, chemicals - all this leads to a poor ecological balance. Minimizing unnecessary mountains of paper and digitizing processes can not only be economically sustainable, but also an important step towards ecological sustainability.
4. accounting: digitizing incoming invoices with intelligent software
Digital solutions simplify and streamline work processes. Relieving your own employees and freeing them from manual tasks that software or artificial intelligence can easily take over is increasingly essential for companies to remain competitive and save costs. Digitizing incoming invoices is a good first step. If you want to digitize and automate your incoming invoices, you need suitable DMS software. This should ensure that ...
- all invoices can be viewed digitally and are organized.
- the responsible employees have access to the invoices regardless of their location and can approve them digitally.
- the account assignment and payment of invoices can also be processed digitally.
Read out digital invoices with softwareIntelligent software
that uses OCR to read out all important invoice data is essential for
digital invoice receipt. This applies not only to incoming
paper invoices, but also to all invoices that arrive
via email or EDI (electronic data interchange) in a different format.
Reading out data digitally saves a lot of time compared to time-consuming manual input, as an invoice contains a lot of important information. Good OCR software also minimizes the
susceptibility to errors that can quickly have serious consequences when typing in numbers, for example. OCR can therefore replace the principle of dual control in the medium term. In addition to the name of the seller and the product description, the
data read out also includes the date of purchase, the unit price of the goods, the total price and the quantity of products purchased. Furthermore, the
information on the invoice provides information about the agreed payment terms, shipping costs, tax amounts and possible discounts.
Practical tip: After your invoice has been digitally read and all important data has been recognized, you can pay the imported invoice directly in the fileee app or web application with
fileee Pay. This saves you even more time in your processes.
5 Digitizing incoming invoices - how does that work?
In order for a company to
automate its
invoice receipt, it must first
digitize its invoice receipt. To do this, it is important to contact all
suppliers and ask them to refrain from sending invoices by paper post in future and to use fully
digital invoicing instead. This also applies to new suppliers - it is preferable to request a digital invoice from them right from the start.
Important: It is essential to set up a
central e-mail address for all incoming invoices, to which every responsible employee has access. This is the only way to collect all
electronic invoices in one place and avoid tedious and confusing shuffling back and forth in different folders!
Intelligent document management systems allow automated e-mail import by connecting the mailbox or by forwarding the e-mail to an individual e-mail address. Not all companies will
digitize their
work processes, which is why invoices will continue to arrive by post in the future. This makes it
impossible to
receive invoices completely digitally. All invoices that arrive by letter or fax must therefore always be
scanned first and then
saved and
imported as a digital document. The aim here is to minimize the number of these manual scans and optimize the process using
mobile scanning options, for example.
6 How are digital invoices archived?
In the
GoBD(Principles for the proper management and storage of books, records and documents in electronic form for data access), it is regulated by law that all invoices must be archived in their original format. This means that in the case of a paper invoice, there is no way around keeping the paper document.
When it comes to invoices sent by email, the following applies with regard to archiving: If the email contains important information that is attached in connection with the actual invoice, you are obliged to archive the email itself. If this is not the case, it is sufficient to archive only the invoice. However, to avoid any risk, we recommend using
software with an automatic email archiving function via the cloud.
Important
: Different
retention periods apply to different types of documents. Invoices and accounting documents must be kept for 10 years. You are also obliged to
archive all digital documents
in an audit-proof manner. This means that stored documents may
not be deleted or changed from the moment they are archived.
Practical tip:
fileeeBusiness is a
DMS that can be used to digitize all documents, read them using
OCR and AI-based analysis and
archive them in an audit-proof manner. The fileee DMS also offers a
connection to various important services such as DATEV, with which you can easily handle your bookkeeping or work with your tax office.
7 Digital invoices and the legal situation - what do you need to be aware of?
If you want to
automate invoice receipt, you should first familiarize yourself with the
legal situation : Digital invoices are just as legally valid as paper invoices. It is always essential for
digital document management that all invoices contain the required
mandatory information , such as the date of issue, the full name and address of the company providing the service and the recipient, as well as a consecutive invoice number. Furthermore, they should be clearly legible and it must be guaranteed that they are stored in accordance with all aspects of
data security and can always be retrieved.
A digital invoice must be stored digitally, because according to the rules of the GoBD, original documents must always be archived unaltered. A media break, i.e. printing and filing a digital document, is a violation of the
guidelines.
For an invoice to be considered audit-proof according to the
HGB (German Commercial Code), the AO (German Fiscal Code) and the
GoBD, it must be stored digitally.
audit-proof archived the following criteria must be met:
- Immutability and traceability
- Regularity
- Completeness
- Availability
- Access protection
- Security
You can find out exactly what this means and which
requirements a document management system must fulfill in order to be considered audit-proof according to the
GoBD in
Bitkom's GoBD checklist, for example.
8 Digitizing invoice receipt and accounting - how does it work?
Digitized accounting is often one of the first steps towards a
paperless office. The basis for this is to first
digitize incoming invoices. Once you have all the digitized documents together, you need
automated invoicing software. This is necessary for the
management and processing of all financial documents and handles all
accounting tasks automatically. Among other things, the software is able to create different types of documents such as quotations,
delivery bills and
incoming and outgoing invoices or to
compare related
documents with each other. The software can also be used to create
automatic invoice approvals.
It is particularly important to always consult with your tax advisor(s) to check whether your measures comply with the requirements of the
GoBD requirements. This will save you trouble with the tax office in the event of an audit.
