When running a restaurant, every detail counts in crafting a memorable dining experience. From curating a diverse menu to having a server who shares daily specials and pairs beverages to enhance the mood, every touchpoint matters.
Behind the scenes, the server collaborates seamlessly with the kitchen staff, ensuring dishes arrive in perfect order and timing. Guests settle their checks and leave satisfied, and the cycle continues, especially in the bustling holiday season.
But that’s just the front view. In the background, you’re juggling with consumption reports, managing thousands of invoices, and maintaining strong vendor relationships, all while bracing for the holiday rush. Thanks to accounts payable automation, you can focus better on guest satisfaction and serving up memorable cuisines.
That said, your restaurant operates under conditions and faces operational challenges that are unique to your industry. Increasing volume of invoices that require prompt payment, time-sensitive inventory and varying expenses require attention to detail, making AP workflow unique.
What is Accounts Payable Workflow?
Whether you had a single fine-dining or casual dining establishment, chains, bistros or a franchise spread out across a large geographic footprint, you need to follow the steps to manage and pay short-term debts. This covers invoice capturing, coding, validation, approvals, making payments and keeping accurate records.
If you opt conventional accounts payable cycle, your AP team verifies and pays invoices to ensure consistency of pricing, ingredients and materials received, and payment terms. The team is bound by robust internal controls to eliminate late,duplicate and fraudulent payments.
These processes typically involve manual two-way (PO to invoice) or three-way (PO to receipt to invoice) matching, meticulously tracking costs, inputs, and outputs on a daily basis. They also require seamless communication across all facets of operations, from supply and delivery to property and staff management.
From Bottlenecks to Breakthroughs: The Importance of AP Workflow
Efficiency, transparency, and accountability are the pillars of a smooth accounts payable (AP) workflow. However, managing the sheer volume of invoices, purchase orders, vendor relationships, and compliance requirements can create significant bottlenecks. Manual AP processes only add to the chaos, introducing delays, errors, duplications and inefficiencies that drain valuable resources.
In the restaurant industry, timing is everything. Fresh ingredients, dry goods, and perishable supplies must be delivered and replenished daily, adhering to a precise schedule. Deliveries often start before the first customer arrives and must be swiftly counted and accounted for to ensure seamless meal service.
Missing a critical delivery—like bread, patties, or vegetables—isn’t an option. A single disruption in this delicate supply chain can derail menu availability and cut into daily revenue.
Vendors, too, operate on tight margins and rely on timely, error-free payments. They need clear visibility into their invoice status and expect swift resolutions to their queries. Delays or errors not only damage vendor relationships but also risk impacting the supply chain.
To stay ahead, it’s essential to streamline and optimize your AP workflow. By doing so, you can handle more invoices with ease, seize early payment discounts, enhance the productivity of your finance team, and minimize fraud risks.
Whether you’re flipping burgers for a holiday rush, packing up delivery orders, or artfully plating a signature dish, one ingredient no restaurant should go without is a smart, customizable accounts payable platform.
AP automation done right transforms the way restaurants manage their workload. It eliminates unnecessary costs and waste, prevents costly errors and delays, and ensures seamless communication—from suppliers to staff and from purchase orders to final payment. It’s not just an upgrade; it’s a recipe for smoother multi-course accounts payable workflow and greater profitability.
Automated Accounts Payable Workflow: A Road Map to Better Restaurant Accounting
Traditionally, AP teams manually input, code, and verify vendor invoices before entering them into the ERP system for approval and payment. While this approach has served well over the years, the rapid growth in the restaurant industry is exposing its limitations, leading to bottlenecks and inefficiencies.
By implementing an accounts payable automation solution, you can transform this process, automating tasks and creating a seamless end-to-end workflow from invoice receipt to payment. This is also an opportunity to revamp AP workflows and policies, making them more efficient and scalable.
Let’s dive into how AP workflow automation can elevate your operations.
Manage Company
This console serves as your central hub for managing multiple accounts, locations, or franchises, all conveniently categorized by geography. Seamlessly integrated with leading accounting software like QuickBooks Online, Xero, and Sage Intacct, it ensures effortless financial management across platforms.
You no longer need to switch between accounting software. You can use accounts payable automation platform as standalone, simplifying processes and saving valuable time.
Multiple Sources of Receipt
Bring your documents from Google Drive, Dropbox, email, or FTP, and easily access them for up to 180 days. Whether it’s invoices, contracts, or receipts, all your files stay organized and readily available. Once processed, the documents are securely stored permanently, ensuring you can retrieve them whenever you need them.
AP Workflow Automation
Streamline your workflow with customized vendor conditions tailored to your business needs. Set specific rules to automatically route invoices and payment validations to the right decision-makers, be it CFOs, controllers, or owners, enhancing efficiency and accountability.
Take it further by defining workflow rules to assign documents to available AP clerks seamlessly. Assign by company or vendor to ensure optimal delegation, which is just a one-time exercise.
For instance, in high-volume AP operations of restaurants with multiple locations or franchises, complex invoices can be routed to the most suitable resource in real time. This ensures your team efficiently manages large workloads, minimizing bottlenecks and maximizing productivity.
Auto Bill Posting with Smart OCR
Streamline document imports with AP automation. Sync directly from Google Drive, Dropbox, FTP, or your email, manual bills and adjustments and scan/upload physical bills with ease. Eliminate manual entry by extracting data from scanned documents or PDFs using smart OCR. Additional line items can be included if necessary and quickly verify the details before submitting the bill for approval.
Bill Approval
Two-way approval streamlines invoice matching with purchase orders, ensuring accuracy and efficiency. With an automated accounts payable workflow, authorized approvers can quickly and easily validate invoices, speeding up the approval process. This is more applicable to high volume operations.
Bills to Pay
It compiles precise payment details directly from approved invoices, ensuring accuracy and minimizing errors. This streamlined process not only reduces the risk of mistakes but also saves valuable time, allowing you to focus on higher-priority tasks with confidence.
Mode of Payments
It seamlessly integrates with your preferred payment method—ACH, credit card, virtual card, or check. You also have the flexibility to access credit and make full or partial payments, tailored to your business needs. Even you can utilize one credit on multiple invoices of the same vendor.
Payment Approval
The payment approval process enhances your AP controls, adding an extra layer of security and accountability. By ensuring proper checks and balances, it helps prevent fraud, duplicate payments, and other costly errors. With complete visibility and transparency, you can avoid lost invoices, late payments, and missed cash discounts.
Make Payments
After payment approval, you can initiate transactions using your preferred method. The system’s payment aging feature ensures prioritization of vendor payments, helping you manage cash flow effectively. For enhanced security, two-factor authentication safeguards every transaction, providing robust control over your Accounts Payable. Best of all, the platform automatically syncs with your accounting system, eliminating the need for manual updates and streamlining your workflow effortlessly.
The Transformative Power of Accounts Payable Workflow Automation
Accounts payable (AP) workflow automation streamlines and improves efficiency in the AP process. Here are the top benefits of adopting AP automation:
Preventing Fraud – Automation reduces the risk of fraud by minimizing data entry errors and eliminating fake invoices. Features like two-way matching, audit trails, and automatic approvals protect against fraudulent activities.
Avoiding Overpayments – Automated AP solutions identify duplicate invoices and errors, preventing overpayments and maintaining steady cash flow.
Streamlining Audits – With automation, audit data is centralized, making the process faster and more efficient compared to manual, paper-based systems.
Ensuring Timely Payments – By automating the process, marginal human errors are reduced, and invoices are verified and paid on time.
Increasing Profitability – Timely payments foster stronger vendor relationships and can lead to discounts, helping to improve your bottom line.
Complete Visibility – Automation consolidates all invoice information in one place, giving your AP team easy access to payment statuses and details.
Optimizing Invoice Approvals – Automated workflows route invoices to the right people, eliminating paperwork, frequent reminders, and reducing the chances of lost approvals.
Eliminating Data Entry – OCR technology extracts data from invoices, cutting down on manual entry, reducing errors, and speeding up the payment process.
Pattern Inconsistency – If a vendor’s invoices contain inconsistencies, an AP automation platform will flag them, providing you with full visibility into any discrepancies.
For example, if Vendor A regularly invoices $1,000 each month but submits a $1,500 invoice in December, the system will immediately flag the discrepancy, keeping you informed and in control.
Adopting AP automation helps businesses operate more efficiently, improve accuracy, and drive greater profitability.
A Way Forward
Automating your accounts payable workflow is a game-changer for future-proofing your business and staying competitive. With automation, suppliers can count on you for timely, hassle-free payments, strengthening partnerships and unlocking opportunities for early payment discounts or cashback rewards from virtual payments. Additionally, automation enhances security, simplifies financial reconciliation, and provides instant access to data for actionable insights.
By streamlining processes like invoice matching, approval routing, and payment processing, AP automation dramatically increases efficiency, reduces costly errors, and speeds up processing times. The result? Lower operational costs, improved accuracy, and greater financial control.
This shift to automation doesn’t just refine your operations—it elevates them. Enhanced productivity and seamless workflows set the stage for sustained growth and success, positioning your business to thrive in a competitive marketplace.
Published on: 6 December 2024
John Bugh is Chief Revenue Officer for PathQuest, responsible for the strategic direction, planning, vision, growth, and performance of the company’s marketing, branding, and revenue streams.
As a seasoned professional with over 35 years of experience in executive sales, marketing, and operational leadership, John has worked to build high-performing leadership-teams that have a demonstrated track record of accelerating growth, increasing revenue, establishing sustainability, and improving profitability.
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