Currents

Don’t Moose Around! Be the Best-in-Class Accounts Payable Team in 2022

Have you seen this video of a moose on the loose blocking traffic on a highway? The lesson here is simple: your accounts payable function can’t have bottlenecks. And those bottlenecks will slow down processes and waste company time, money, and opportunities in 2022.

Gartner and Ardent Partners Advise How to Build a Best-in-class Accounts Payable Operation

The world of accounts payable continues to evolve, and the COVID pandemic is driving yet more change in the industry as organizations seek to virtualize their AP processes. Learn from experts at Gartner and Ardent Partners about benchmarks and best practices to consider.

When Cash (Control) is King: Is Your Accounts Payable Strategy Optimized for a COVID-19 World?

The dramatic economic shift caused by COVID-19 has led to a sudden need for finance and AP teams to reassess vendor payment strategies, in order to optimize cash reserves. How can organizations ensure that they have the visibility needed to make these critical decisions?

Is Your Organization Taking Fraud Seriously Enough?

Organizations that rely on manual processes to verify and approve expenses and invoices could leave themselves open to become victims of fraud, and even the largest companies aren't immune. How can your organization foster a fraud-prevention culture?

Beyond Efficiency: How Spend Data Delivers the Biggest Benefits of Expense and Invoice Management

Manual expense reporting and invoice processing are huge efficiency killers for both business travelers and corporate finance teams. By automating these processes through the implementation of expense and invoice management technology, organizations can save tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. However, the financial benefits of eliminating inefficient use of employees’ time can often just be a fraction of the overall financial benefits. The big-ticket improvements come from the visibility that automation delivers.

How I Did It: Reducing Administrative Time to Devote More Resources to Our Core Mission

Northeast Treatment Centers is a Philadelphia-based non-profit which provides a continuum of trauma-informed behavioral health and social services designed to meet complex needs of all family members. In this guest blog post, NET’s Controller, Robert Ferrandino, and Accounts Payable Specialist, Teresamarie Morris, explain how Chrome River’s expense and invoice automation solutions let business flow by enabling the finance team to focus on high value activities.

Avoid Becoming the Next Victim of Invoice Fraud

It was recently revealed that a sophisticated invoice fraud scheme extracted more than $100 million from two of the world's largest companies. What steps can AP teams take to avoid their own organization falling victim to scams like these?

What You Need to Know About Invoice Automation OCR Technology

Optical character recognition has gone mainstream for document management. But are all OCR solutions created equally? Actually, no. Learn what you need to know in order to maximize the benefit of your OCR investment for invoice automation.

ICYMI: Last Year’s 10 Most Popular Blogs

Worried that you may have missed out on some of our blog posts? Fear not - we've compiled a list of the 10 most-read blog posts in 2018. See what your peers thought were the most pressing topics of the year.

Five Reasons Why Web Apps are Essential for Speedy Invoice Approvals

Rapid invoice approval is critical for effective cash flow and to maintain effective visibility into the accounts payable process. The kind of technology you use to access this data could play a major factor in your company's ability to deliver this insight.

Invoice Solutions that Finance Teams and Approvers Actually Love

Today we’re delighted to unveil the newest edition of our invoice management software, Chrome River INVOICE. The latest version of Chrome River INVOICE will make it even easier for approvers and accounts payable teams to track and approve invoices, whether they are at their desk or away from the office.

How Automating Invoice Processing can be a Shot in the Arm for Hospital Finance Teams

Hospitals typically receive a quarter of their invoices outside the PO system - often from smaller, local vendors. Processing these invoices manually can take thousands of hours and cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. What can hospitals do to streamline these processes and reduce administrative costs.

Why the Manual Invoice Processing Model Is Broken (And How to Fix It)

Every organization’s finance team knows that controlling supplier costs is critical. However, one area that many organizations have yet to address is the actual cost of the invoice management and processing function.

How Can Invoice Workflow Automation Work for Your Organization?

Interest in back-office technology continues to increase as a way to control costs and increase productivity. What are the latest trends in the industry, and what benefits could it bring to the way your AP team processes invoices?

Reducing Business Expenses Without Impacting Operations (or Morale)

We’re getting towards the end of the second quarter, which means that public companies will soon be doing their earnings calls and press releases. If you’ve ever read these, you’ll see that they’re full of jargon and code-words. One of these is “expense management,” which is often code for “cost-cutting,” which in turn often means “job cuts.”

What Could Manual AP Processes Be Costing Your Organization?

We recently ran a webinar in conjunction with Vendorin, which discussed some of the challenges faced by CFOs with their accounts payables processes. As part of the webinar, we asked some questions to gauge the current state of invoice automation, and some of the bigger issues currently impacting the function. The upshot of our findings is that, although technology plays a significantly greater role in AP than just a few years ago, there’s still plenty of opportunity to improve efficiency.

Don’t Miss our VANTAGE 2015 AP Automation Speaking Session!

Chrome River is excited to attend VANTAGE 2015 again this year. We have several opportunities to get together with you. Many of you already use Chrome River EXPENSE. We invite you to join our "APAutomation" speaking session on Thursday, June 18 from 2:15 - 3:15 to learn more about Chrome River INVOICE. Also, stop by booth #13 in the Exhibit Hall to say hi!

Is E-Invoicing the Wave of Future?

Big data is already changing the ways companies engage in sales, marketing and operations. And its impact is not expected to stop there. Tradeshift CEO Christian Lanng predicts big data’s next big move is into the fields of finance and procurement, with a massive shift into the world of e-invoicing.

Need Cash Now for Your Growing Business? Improve Your Invoice Management

When your organization is growing quickly, you need to fuel that expansion with cash. You could try to borrow the money, but a better option might be to focus on speeding up your cash conversion cycle, according to a recent article on the CNNMoney website.

3 Common Hurdles to Adopting Electronic Payments

In one’s personal life, the need to dig out the checkbook is increasingly rare; using a credit or debit card or an electronic check is often more efficient and reliable. Paper checks are steadily losing ground to other payment methods in business, too, including Automated Clearing House debits, wire transfers and company purchasing cards. The average organization now only uses paper checks for half of its transactions with other businesses, according to a recent article on CFO.com.

Go Paperless: 5 Reasons to Switch to Electronic Invoice Processing

In a humorous take on manual invoice processing, a post on the Business 2 Community blog highlights the “paper addiction” problem prevalent in some offices and prescribes a 12-step recovery plan.

Do Your Technology Projects Fade Before the Rewards are Gained?

At the launch for a new technology initiative, the project team is often riding a “sugar high,” and executives have vaguely grand things to say. With any long-term project, whether it’s a “big data” initiative or implementing AP automation, the initial rush of enthusiasm eventually fades while the rewards seem far off. How can your organization keep up the momentum with worthwhile projects that take a while to reach maturity?

Superior Spend Control Is One of Four Factors Driving Investment in AP Automation

It’s easy to see the disadvantages of a manual, paper-based accounts payable system: high costs, inaccuracy and inefficiency. Yet investment in AP automation tends to lag behind customer-focused improvements, according to a study discussed in Business Finance. Paper checks still account for over half of business-to-business payments, but that number is steadily declining as AP departments gradually move toward automated electronic processes.

Invoice Scammers Are Getting More Skillful and Subtle – Have a Good Defense

The bill arrives a few days after your company purchases a domain name for a new service you’re launching. The invoice is an administrative fee for registering the new web address with the international domain name directory. While this document looks official and the amount requested seems feasible, it’s a scam. Is your company’s invoice management system robust enough to weed out these scams and solicitations?

Avoid Late Payments by Automating Your Invoice Management

At the best of times, a big customer paying late can make invoice processing less efficient, generating hidden costs. But for many small businesses, a late payment triggers cash-flow problems that affect the entire company, hurting profits and productivity at each step. Rather than holding customers solely responsible, companies should take a hard look at how their invoice management may be contributing to the problem.

AP Automation Frees CFOs’ Time To Focus On Strategic Growth Opportunities

Organizations often expect the CEO to provide strategic vision, but an article on CFO.com explains that the CFO can play a key role in scaling the company. To focus on growth, CFOs should first clear their desks of basic finance and accounting tasks by using outsourcing and AP automation, then use analytics to reveal financial obstacles and identify strategic opportunities.

3 Ways Mobile Accounting Tools Can Give Your Organization A Boost

Finance departments already routinely use online platforms to collaborate and communicate with users. Now, new mobile apps are proving useful for employees who work on the go, an article on AccountingToday.com reports. Whether your organization needs online expense reporting, document access or just a quick way to look up data, a mobile app may offer the most convenient connection to your accounting department.

4 Ways to Beat the Competition by Outsourcing Invoice Management

The world’s biggest companies are eager to boost bottom lines by outsourcing such finance and accounting functions as invoice management, an article on AccountingToday.com reports. So far, however, relatively few have seized these opportunities for cost savings, improved efficiency and analytical insights.

5 Ways Automated Invoice Management Can Save You Money

With cloud-based services growing more robust and popular, automated invoice management tools present many businesses and organizations with new ways to cut costs. These tools, available as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) subscription, can ease or eliminate data entry and help managers control expenses through improved visibility.

The Increasingly Strategic Role of Accounts Payable – Part 2

In Part 1, we looked at the differences between manual and automated expense and invoice entry. So how does automated entry make Accounts Payable more strategic? Here are just a few of the ways that immediately come to mind.

The Increasingly Strategic Role of Accounts Payable – Part 1

Over the past 14 years, I’ve had the good fortune to be part of many business-process-improvement initiatives related to Spend Management. It’s been my experience that often, at first, the Accounts Payable managers are concerned about the impact on their department and can even be reluctant to pursue Accounts Payable automation altogether. I’m not sure if it’s the specter of the way robotics once replaced countless skilled workers in Detroit or the common notion that one day we will all be replaced by machines. It just seems like AP managers are often concerned about losing headcount and control over processes that they have owned for many years.

How to Take the Headache Out of Invoice Management

In a perfect world, your organization’s invoice management would be the last thing you’d need to worry about. It would be a secure, transparent and paperless operation, with accounts payable managing the process and approvers easily validating payments. However, with many vendors and suppliers still using paper invoices, the reality is that companies often fall back on inefficient and expensive manual processing.

Discover 3 Ways Invoice Management Drives Down Costs

As the economy recovers, companies may find vendors increasingly reluctant to accept long payment terms that stretch out 45, 60, or 90 days. And when one of your oldest, most trusted vendors requests 30-day terms, it’s important to keep the peace rather than risk disruptions. Instead, organizations can save by using automated invoice management to increase efficiency, prevent costly errors, and secure favorable terms from vendors.

Dave Terry Discusses the Impact of New Tax Laws on Expense Controls

Empower Employees with Mobile Solutions to Improve the Bottom Line

Now that there is an app for nearly every conceivable function, companies have realized that their second largest expense, travel, can be fully automated – bringing a new level of insight, analysis and negotiation to the ubiquitous expense report. Gone are the days of paper, calculators and spreadsheets for the tedious yet mandatory task of reimbursement. In their place are flashy smartphone apps that track the traveler’s location and purchases and create expense transactions automatically. These mobile solutions are linked to cloud-based expense management systems that provide immediate feedback to the employee when policies have been breached. They also provide high-visibility notification for approvers when compliance conditions are not met, allowing firms to exert greater control over their operating expenses to adhere to client requirements and firm policies. Requiring employees to manually complete expense reports, which not only wastes time but also drives up costs through lost productivity and increased staffing, is no longer a viable option. In today’s economy, it’s either increase productivity or suffer reduced profitability.

5 Ways CFOs Are Reducing Company Costs Right Now

A requirement of every chief financial officer’s job is to find ways to improve the company’s profitability. Improvements can be accomplished by making the best use of corporate funds and reducing expenses. How CFOs reduce company costs can vary greatly from one business to the next. The industry type, business size and corporate structure are all important factors.

The Data Behind Expense Key Performance Indicators

The way to drive performance is to measure it. Do you want to judge the success of a project? Do you want to change people's behavior? You need to create Key Performance Indicators (KPI) that quantify the objectives you are striving for. Your KPIs may change from project to project and from year to year. But they should be consistent in their ability to measure the success or failure of any set of activities.

Best Ways for a Small Business To Get a Handle on Finances & Expenses

There is a popular saying in the South that is appropriate in the world of small business: “It’s hard to drain the swamp when you’re up to your elbows in alligators.” For small-business owners, with limited time and resources, it is difficult to keep control of finances when most of your time is spent just keeping the business going. Customers are calling, shipments must be unloaded, orders are pending, and employees are complaining. All of these distractions can keep a small-business owner or manager from taking a hard look at finances.The issue is not necessarily when to examine finances, but how small businesses manage expenses and finances. Applying the following tips could actually give you the time you need to get a handle on your finances:

A Stranger Among Us

World-renowned Italian artist Franco Innocenti lives in what remains of a 10th century castle tower and paints the world as he sees it. His paintings reveal a reality different from the one to which we are accustomed, as Franco removes objects from their natural environments and places them in completely unusual surroundings, creating absurd combinations that reveal paradoxical aspects of the world around us.

Automated Invoicing: 3 Ways It Can Improve Efficiency

In any business there are specific questions that should be part of every continuous improvement plan:

Why Your Organization Can’t Risk Expense Report Inaccuracies

Few would argue with the truism “Numbers don’t lie,” but inaccurate numbers can and do lie all the time. A good example is the vast number of inaccurate numbers that can enter an organization’s financial system via expense reports. Organizations that allow employees to write or type expenses into a form that is manually reviewed and re-entered into the accounting system by a staff member have introduced several opportunities to enter inaccurate information for each transaction.

9 Best Practices for Automating your AP Department: Part 3 of 3

In this third and final part of our three-part series, we will conclude our discussion on accounts payable best practices fueled by the excellent article "9 Best Practices for Automating Your AP Department" written by David Schmidt and Katie McMurry for the third-quarter printing of Financial Operations Matters. It provides an excellent roadmap for automation that is both commonsensical and actionable.

A Solid Case for Accounts Payable Automation - Harry Townsend

To my mind, it seems absurd that one organization selling products or services to another submits a printed paper invoice via their billing system and an employee at the purchasing company manually enters the same invoice into their accounts payable system. Not only is this an inefficient and expensive exercise, but it is totally eco-unfriendly!

9 Best Practices for Automating your AP Department: Part 2 of 3

In this second part of a three-part series, we will resume our discussion of Accounts Payable Best Practices (Part 1) fueled by an excellent article entitled "9 Best Practices for Automating Your AP Department," written by David Schmidt and Katie McMurry. Their work appeared in the Third Quarter printing of Financial Operations Matters and provides an excellent road map for automation that is both commonsensical and actionable.

9 Best Practices for Automating your AP Department: Part I of 3

Recently I had the good fortune to stumble across an excellent article entitled "9 Best Practices for Automating Your AP Department" in the third-quarter printing of Financial Operations Matters. This little gem was written by David Schmidt and Katie McMurry and offers a viewpoint on AP Automation that is very much aligned with my own personal opinions on this topic.

Welcome to CURRENTS Expense Management Automation Blog

Welcome to the Chrome River CURRENTS blog. I wanted this initial post to announce that we were the first technology company with a blog, but I understand that there are actually already a few others. OK, so clearly not the first, but it’s the first blog from *us* and we are excited that you are here.