Automation Potential in: Cash Application
automation Impact Evaluation
Cash application is the process where incoming payments are applied to the corresponding customer invoice.
On the surface, the process of cash application seems simple enough. In the not-so-distant past where cheques were a popular form of payment, orders would come in and be recorded, followed by the cheque for the invoiced amount.
These days there are dozens of different ways in which payments may come in. This ranges from traditional lockbox services, wire transfers, private cards, electronic invoicing, digital payment portals and even proprietary B2B apps. Not only does payment come in an ever-diverse range of formats but a single invoice is often sent for multiple orders which makes simple amount-comparison all the harder. Added to this complexity is the fact that cash application is a time-sensitive process, which has a direct impact on business performance.
Cash application is key to ensuring a predictable and steady cash flow. A slow cash application process becomes a bottleneck where an organisation doesn’t have a clear oversight on its own funds. Orders and payments waiting to be “applied” are not useful to anyone, acting almost like an IOU.
case Study
Higher Education Company
Automation of cash application has allowed companies to eliminate routine tasks in the process.
Proservartner worked alongside a higher education company who was frustrated with the high error rate and cost associated with their manual accounts receivable processes.We were able to streamline a number of their processes by creating a central archive which stored all remittances.
This eliminated the issue facing cash application teams that work with multiple sources of remittance information. We then created a bot which retrieved remittances and extracted the relevant information. Automation was then utilised for the matching up of invoices and payments.
The company was able to save a massive 1030 hours each month, with a monthly saving of over £18,000. After seeing the impact that RPA could have and how robots were customised to their exact needs, the company has decided to expand their automation efforts moving forward.