Article Abstract:

The introduction of mini and micro computers to the business community in the 1980s created an unprecedented explosion of productivity.  With that growth in productivity came an economic inflection point like none other in history.  The success of technology adoption lead to even greater demand and the possibilities seemed endless.

Article Excerpt:

One of the early adapters to computer technology was finance and accounting.  These areas were traditionally the largest departments in employee headcount.  The use of information systems resulted in a dramatic reduction in cost and improvement in service. 

Over time, finance and accounting departments began to use technology in increasingly sophisticated ways.  The logic went that most business functions were using some form of computer technology so why not reuse data that already exists?  This information sharing included employee timekeeping, vehicle mileage, purchasing and sales forecasting, to name a few.  And while data integration between these separate systems wasn’t always easy, it got done for the most part.  It seemed like a “no brainer” that since vendors produce their invoices using a computer, they should be able to send them electronically.  In that way, the purchasing company could just import the electronic invoice without any further data entry required.

Then the shine began to fade off of the apple.   The technology available to facilitate electronic invoicing was Electronic Data Interchange, or EDI.  And while EDI worked with it came a significant amount of overhead and management.  The sender of the electronic invoice had to account for every nuance of each individual accounting system intending to import the information.  That meant multiple EDI formats.  In some cases, this applied to the specific version of a software system.  The slightest unaccounted for change in any of the sending or receiving systems would bomb out an entire set of transactions.  The EDI formats were cryptic and had to be prepared by staff with significant training and experience with EDI.  So while EDI fulfilled the promise of e-invoicing it was often the case that the cure was worse than the disease.

Using EDI on a mass scale became a nightmare and electronic invoice interchange was relegated to major trading partners (Goodyear Tire to Ford Motors, for example).  For the rest of the business community, 85% of all invoices continue to be paper based sent in the mail.  “High tech” is often viewed as a PDF image arriving via email, requiring that the receiving party print the document and manually enter the data (which actually increases the cost for the receiving party).  Despite all the advances in information technology applied to accounting, invoice processing (which is 80% of the AP process) remains a paper-based manual process with significant data entry.

Today, in any survey of financial executives, a high need is to have the benefits of e-invoicing and eliminate the manual data entry work at an affordable price.  That need has been unfulfilled – until now.

FileBound e-now is the bridge between the paper invoice and the benefits offered by e-invoicing.  With FileBound e-now the business can make every invoice an electronic invoice.  Invoices are scanned upon arrival, regardless of the delivery format, with the information needed by accounting being electronically read and stored.  The image of the invoice is also stored, with the needed detail.  The paper document is destroyed and the process continues with no further data entry or document handling required.

The benefits of e-invoices from e-now are significantly reduced staff, elimination of data entry errors, automatic importing of scanned data into the accounting system and reduced expense for courier services.  Each of these benefits translates to a cash savings for the business.

Best of all is the value.  The business gets all the benefits of e-invoicing at one low price.  For just a quarter an invoice the businesses can store thousands of invoices on-line for just a few hundred dollars a month.   That is a tremendous value compared to the cost of staff for data entry and error correction.

FileBound e-now is the bridge to the benefits of e-invoicing for just a quarter.