We’ve added AP dashboards to our software to provide you with insight into your purchase, invoice, and payment process at a glance.
Being able to track these gives you the ability to easily manage your procure to pay process to improve your bottom line.
In this post you’ll learn what our AP dashboards can do to easily track your KPIs and streamline processes to improve your bottom line.
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Same Content in Video Format
We know that some people learn better from videos than from reading. So we created this video that has the same content as this article.
If you prefer to read more about AP dashboards you can do so below the video.
What is Accounts Payable (AP)?
Accounts payable (AP) is an accounting term that means: “The money you owe for goods or services you have purchased but not yet paid for.”
Accounts payable also refers to the process, department, or people responsible for paying invoices.
A company’s finances show AP as a liability – they are bills and invoices that you must paid.
An accounts payable department or clerk’s primary responsibility is to process and pay invoices.
Firstly, they review transactions between the company and its vendors/suppliers. Secondly, they ensure that all legitimate invoices get approved, processed, and paid on time.
Processing an invoice includes extracting important data from the invoice and then inputting it into the company’s financial, bookkeeping, or ERP system.
The invoices then go through the company’s business process including invoice approval, filing, and payment.
Lastly, accounts payable pays the invoice.
You can check out our article What is Accounts Payable? for more details and examples of different types of accounts payable.
What are AP Dashboards?
AP dashboards show information that your AP team needs to monitor in order to operate smoothly, manage bottlenecks, and get the bills paid on time.
AP dashboards display data and metrics as easy-to-read key performance indicators (KPIs).
They summarize key AP data, track AP trends, and even provide alerts when something’s not right in your AP process.
The data is displayed in real-time and can be configured to provide tailored insight into your AP process and data.
Our AP dashboards also track the details of POs and invoices and provide totals around your AP balance.
These include KPIs such as total, current, and overdue payable balances, invoice aging reports and vendor information.
Our dashboards also track the performance of your AP department, such as its processing output, efficiency, and ability to capture rebates or early pay discounts.
Here is an example of our AP Dashboard. This summarizes high level information about AP: number of invoices, where they are in the approval process, their value, and the number of invoices past due. It also breaks invoices down by due date, by number, and total value.
And here’s an example of our AP KPI dashboard focused on year to date performance. It shows the number of invoiced paid on time, how long they take to get paid, and number of invoices received vs. processed per month.
Finally, here’s an example of our KPI dashboard with built-in alerts. It shows the average days to process an invoice with a drill-down alert for stalled invoices.
How Can I Use Them To Improve My Bottom Line?
An efficient accounts payable (AP) department has a positive impact on any company’s bottom line.
Paying suppliers on time or even early helps the company maintain strong relationships with vendors. That’s critical at a time of challenging supply chain logistics.
Our accounts payable dashboard helps the AP team manage cash flow and control invoice processing costs. The team can easily keep tabs on key metrics and analyze problems to keep the payment process running smoothly and efficiently.
And, as noted, efficient AP teams can earn their company early payment discounts!
Finally, AP dashboards allow you to keep track of important information for audits.
It’s all part of the benefits of being an efficient, data driven organization.
How Can I Get These Dashboards?
It’s plain to see how useful AP dashboards are. Knowledge is power. And if you can measure something you can manage it.
So how do you build your AP dashboards?
If your company is manually processing invoices you will be hard pressed to build these useful tools.
Our AP dashboards are built-in to our invoice management solutions CoreIntegrator Enterprise and A/P One.
The AP dashboard examples above come pre-configured with our invoice automation solutions!
They are just one of the many benefits of AP automation software.
To Summarize – How AP Dashboards Improve Your Bottom Line
The best and most obvious reason to implement invoice processing automation is to save time and money by automating AP data entry and PO matching.
But AP automation software pays other dividends as well. Like the ability to track your AP KPIs and data in real time. And in an actionable way that allows you to manage cash flow, identify bottlenecks, and contribute to your company’s bottom line.
So why not reach out and request a free, no-pressure demonstration of AP automation today!?