Automation in Restaurant Accounts Payable
Customers are becoming increasingly able to order anything online, including food, receive electronic receipts, and have anything and everything delivered directly to their door. They can make online reservations or stand in line at a kiosk to order without ever talking to a host. This is something that the restaurant industry could have never dreamed of just 20 years ago, but automation in restaurant accounts payable departments doesn’t seem to be considered as important.
Your back offices should be keeping up with the technology you offer your customers. By having higher-level automation in restaurant accounts payable, and other back-office functions, your company as a whole is able to save time and money. A fully automated AP department allows you to send and receive payments electronically, with increased efficiency and reduced costs. But many restaurants lag behind on automating business functions such as paper invoicing.
The main reasons that restaurant owners give when hesitant to switch to electronic invoices are that it would be too much of a hassle to switch, or that it would cost too much. Luckily, while these issues may have once been bigger, today’s accounts payable automation solutions save companies money within a year of automating and have dedicated teams to help your department implement quickly and efficiently.
Thinking about switching to a brand-new accounts payable automation solution is still daunting, but it’s better for your department and company. A major restaurant chain decided to make the switch to automating with iPayables after a previous solution began charging their suppliers a fee. This major chain, which processed over 14,000 invoices every month, found iPayables’ solution that didn’t charge suppliers to be attractive.
However, because iPayables offers a high-level solution, the benefits didn’t stop there. This chain’s AP department was able to achieve better centralized control, increase its paperless invoicing to over 95%, and decrease turnaround time to less than four days. With this turnaround time, the accounts payable department was also able to take advantage of dynamic discounting, earning money back through fast pay discounts.
The result? Better productivity, greater efficiency, and less expenses due to mistakes for both the chain and their valued suppliers.
For chain restaurants, big or small, switching to electronic invoicing gives the added benefit of freeing up AP personnel for more productive activities, rather than manually inputting invoices into the computer, mailing back and forth incorrect invoices, or scanning paper invoices into systems.
Your customers have been enjoying the benefits of the latest technology – and you should be too. Check out our case study for more information on the benefits of switching to higher-level automation in restaurant accounts payable for more information.