Maximising Efficiency: Tips for Supercharging your Schools Accounts Payable Processes

In today's rapidly evolving world, education and accounting are two domains where efficient data management is vital. While automation software has been implemented by many educational institutions, some still face difficulties in areas such as data entry, auditing, security, and visibility. However, it is critical to understand the importance of addressing these concerns to achieve better financial, administrative, and security performance.  

Inefficient data management can lead to significant problems, including data inconsistencies, inaccurate financial statements, and compromised security. These issues can severely impact an institution's reputation, finances, and student outcomes. Therefore, it is crucial to implement a comprehensive data management system that ensures data accuracy, security, and visibility.  

Fortunately, various solutions are available to address these concerns, including cloud-based systems and AI-powered automation. Keep reading to learn how schools can maximise the efficiency of their accounts payable processes with automation.  

Challenges    

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In educational institutions, some notable challenges are experienced universally by finance and IT staff. In the 2022/23 Digital Transformation in Education report, 32% of IT and Finance Managers reported that incorrect data entry and critical systems being restored incorrectly was a pressing security challenge for them. Additionally, 35% of IT and Finance Managers stated that manual staff practices and knowledge when using data were notable security concerns. It is widely known that manual data entry can be highly time-consuming and prone to errors that could otherwise be prevented. Fortunately, data entry can be automated to eliminate mistakes and manual processes for IT and finance staff.  

Auditing is a highly technical process, especially when dealing with high amounts of data and records. With the use of integrated school management systems and accounts payable automation, auditing processes don't need to be complicated. Automated AP software can pull data from your invoices to track real-time changes, identify discrepancies and flag errors, ensuring that auditing processes are compliant and reliable. It has been seen that data visibility is a huge pain point for finance in education. Due to a high staff count and multiple changes to data, it can take much work for staff to keep track of operations.  

Supercharge your Accounts Payable Processes.  

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By implementing an end-to-end accounts payable automation system, schools can experience numerous benefits, with the ability to streamline all their accounts payable tasks into one easy-to-use platform. A digitised solution also provides a fraud detection engine to eliminate fraud risk. With internet scams becoming increasingly prevalent yearly, a fraud detection engine is the key to keeping your school's data safe. Digital solutions can store invoice and supplier records to ensure your invoices are always correct and compliant by performing integrity checks.  

We recommend finding a solution that offers the following solutions to supercharge your schools' accounts payable processes.    

Data Entry    

Cloud-based automation simplifies data entry by offering various user-friendly features that streamline and automate school accounts payable processes. With easy cloud-based data backups, data is always secure and accessible. Single-point data entry allows for data to be entered within the platform and automatically synced to the school management system, ensuring data is always up-to-date between platforms.  

With streamlined workflows and intuitive UI, automation software reduces the time and effort required to enter and manage purchases, approvals and workflows. Additionally, some solutions offer a feature that automatically performs data syncs with your school management system every 15 minutes, ensuring data visibility is always up to date.  

Duplicate Checking    

Duplicate checks are a vital feature of any fraud detection engine. This feature is designed to help schools identify irregularities in invoicing quickly and accurately. The purpose of duplicate checking is to identify and flag any duplicate transactions, purchase orders, account details or suspicious patterns. Along with duplicate checking, automation software also offers automated business number validation, purchase order matching and invoice validation.  

The ability to automate duplicate checking allows schools to be sure that their accounts payable procedures are performed accurately. With this solution, schools can rest assured that they are protected against potential threats while maintaining productivity and efficiency.  

Workflows    

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With digital tools, schools of all sizes can streamline workflows and increase efficiency. The ability to set multi-level delegations of authority allows for easy internal management of staff responsibilities. This provides greater control and flexibility with easy management of financial transactions. With the ability to streamline workflows, Finance Managers can delegate spending amounts, the location of department and unit, as well as appoint multiple approvers and leave approvals, ensuring that processes will continue to move efficiently when an approver is on leave.

 Additionally, the implementation of a testing tool within delegations allows you to test your approval process for effectiveness before rolling it out to your organisation, reducing the risk of errors or delays and improving overall workflow efficiency. This results in easy management of your financial workflows and approvals, allowing you to focus on the bigger picture and drive your education institution forward.    

Automated Audit Trails  

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Automated auditing is an essential component of any competent digital accounts payable solution. It allows schools to monitor and review all financial transactions quickly and accurately. Automated auditing is a comprehensive tool that automatically logs all actions taken by requisitioners and approvers from the moment a transaction is initiated until its completion. Once an invoice has been logged, the software automatically adds it to the audit trail, which provides a visual timeline of the transaction, as well as an action audit trail and a data audit trail, giving your accounts staff a detailed overview of every step in the process.  

What's more, accounts payable automation software allows audit trails to be downloaded as a CSV file with a single click, allowing for easy external auditing and compliance reporting. With a digital solution, schools can maintain high accountability and transparency in financial processes, helping reduce the risk of fraud and error and ensuring compliance.  

Streamlined Integration Process  

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Cloud-based automation provides a secure and accessible place to manage your data from anywhere, at any time, on any device, providing ultimate flexibility and control of your school. Accounts payable automation software can simplify integration with existing school management systems and can create a fast and easy process, with quick onboarding from an expert team getting you on track to automate your accounts payable and security processes within your education institution.    

With school-focused automation solutions having extensive knowledge and experience with school management integration partners, schools can experience the benefit of two-way communication between the School Management System (SMS) and accounts payable solutions. Staff and developers with extensive knowledge of the various SMS platforms can build integrations with care and communication, ensuring the maximum support and performance in your education institutions, school and finance processes.  

Alii – The AP Automation Platform for Schools  

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By implementing automation software such as Alii to supercharge your platform, you can significantly benefit from improved accounts payable and school processes by offering solutions to eliminate manual processes, streamline workflows and improve data visibility.    

Alii provides a range of features to automate your accounts payable processes. With automated duplicate checks, multi-level delegations of authority, automated auditing, fraud mitigation and seamless integration with existing school management systems. Alii's comprehensive all-in-one procure-to-pay platform ensures that your schools' financial processes are compliant, reliable and transparent.