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Technology, Telecom & Utilities: How 5 Minutes per Invoice Adds Up

"Lost time is never found again.”

– Benjamin Franklin

Manual Labor Challenges in AP for Processing Tech, Telecom & Utility Invoices

Accounts Payable (AP) departments in large corporations face significant labor challenges when processing technology, telecom, and utility invoices across multiple locations.

Each location has electricity, water, heat, internet, and phone service. If one of these services goes down, it can cause a devastating impact to core business functions.

High Volume of Invoices

One of the primary challenges is the sheer volume of invoices that need to be processed. Each corporate location can generate multiple invoices from different service providers, leading to a substantial workload for AP staff. This high volume can lead to processing delays and increased chances of errors.

Dependent on Invoice Receipt

The AP process typically begins upon the receipt of an invoice. AP departments react to invoices as they arrive, rather than proactively managing expenses. This dependence on the arrival of invoices means AP teams are constantly in response mode, addressing demands as they emerge.

Vendor-Driven Timelines

Vendors dictate the timeline for payments through their invoicing schedules. AP departments must adapt to these schedules, often with little control over the timing. Some utility providers only offer 15-day payment windows, so invoices need to be processed and approved for payment ASAP to avoid costly late fees and shutoff notices. This leads to a reactive cycle where AP staff must quickly adjust to varying payment deadlines.

No e-Invoice Capability

While many B2B vendors have embraced submitting eInvoices directly into customers’ AP, ERP, or Business Spend platforms (like Coupa or Workday), tech, telecom and utility providers still provide their invoices in the old-fashioned way, such as making them available on an online portal, or for many smaller utility providers and municipalities via snail mail and postcards, requiring a completely manual process to input the invoice into the payment platform.

Manual Data Entry and Processing

Without e-invoices, AP departments are forced to rely on manual data entry. This process is time-consuming, labor-intensive, and prone to human error, leading to potential inaccuracies in financial records.

Increased Processing Time

The manual handling of PDF and paper invoices significantly slows down the processing time. This delay can impact payment cycles, leading to late payments and potentially strained vendor relationships.

Higher Processing Costs

Manual processing of invoices is more costly than electronic processing. It involves additional labor, storage, and supply costs (such as printing and postage). These costs can add up, particularly for large organizations with high invoice volumes.

Late Fees, Shutoff Notices & Service Disruptions

These factors lead to late fees and service shutoffs. These consequences not only affect a company’s financial health but also its operational efficiency. Frequent late payments can damage a company’s credit rating and strain relationships with vendors. Service providers may become less flexible or accommodating, leading to stricter terms, such as quicker shutoffs for late payments.

Let’s Do the Math

Let’s assume that each corporate location has at least 5 invoices to process to keep these services running smoothly.

Sometimes, you receive an email notifying you that the invoice is ready. This means you go to a website, log in, locate the invoice, and download it.

Other times, you get the invoice in the mail – meaning you need to physically get the mail, open the envelope, and pull the invoice out.

Either way, it takes around 5 minutes to get that invoice in hand so you can start processing it in your ERP system.

Let’s do some quick math:

For 20 locations, each handling 5 invoices, and spending an average of 5 minutes per invoice (20 * 5 * 5 / 60), you spend approximately 8 hours dedicated solely to retrieving and preparing these invoices.
Scaling up to 50 locations increases the workload to about 21 hours.
With 100 locations, it escalates to around 42 hours.

Keep in mind, these are those non-PO invoices that require a bit more attention. Plus, when it comes to utilities, the payment terms often hover around 15 days, and delays might mean late fees or shutoff notices.

Using Automation to Alleviate These Challenges

How AMI Solved This Problem in our Business

Processing technology, telecom and utility invoices on behalf of corporations happens to be AMI’s core business – and we have been doing it for over 30 years at scale, so we acutely understand these challenges!

In developing our Utility Invoice Processing Automation, Technology Invoice Processing Automation and Telecom Invoice Processing Automation we need to take on these manual activities before automation is put in place, so we are well aware of that 5-minute routine. Here is what we do to eliminate hands on keyboards:

We create client-specific Master Import Schedules laying out invoice dates for all necessary vendors. This is a blueprint that drives all scheduled automation activities, converting the historically reactive process to a proactive operation.
Driven by the Master Import Schedule, we configure a Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to each vendor’s billing portal to automate the login process and download invoices just like a human would.
Once in hand, our platform handles the data extraction, GL codes, service inventory updates, and discrepancy auditing, pushing it seamlessly into the ERP system within minutes.

The result? For every client we serve, every category we manage, and every invoice we process we return fully inventoried, allocated, and audited invoices back to AP departments for approval and/or payment on average 14 days before the invoice due date.

Online Alternatives Usually Exist for Paper Invoices

Today, you may receive mailed, paper invoices from your technology, telecom and/or utility providers, but oftentimes those providers provide PDF versions of those invoices on their websites.

During implementation, AMI reviews all of your vendors to determine which ones are eligible to go paperless. Sometimes it means creating an online profile, other times it is enrolling in paperless delivery.

Once portal access is created, AMI configures Robotic Process Automation (RPA) bots to login and retrieve your invoices every month, just as a human would, through our Master Import Schedule.

For providers where paper invoices are the only option, AMI has the provider mail the invoice directly to our offices so they can be scanned and imported into our platform to completely relieve our clients of the burden of processing paper invoices manually.

Reach out to AMI for Help!

If the time, effort and cost of processing technology, telecom and utility invoices across multiple corporate locations has caused you to look for alternative automated solutions, we would love to consult with you.

You have plenty of other vendors to worry about – let the AMI lighten the load and make sure you never miss an invoice, never pay a late fee, and never experience a service disruption again.

Coupa & Workday: e-Invoice Conversion

Coupa and Workday have powerful Business Spend Management capabilities, but Telecom, Technology and Utility providers are unwilling to submit their invoices in a compatible e-Invoice format.

This creates a manual work for AP teams to process these invoices.

AMI has created integrations for both of these platforms that not only proactively retrieves invoices from service provider portals through RPA, but also converts these invoices into Coupa and Workday compatible e-Invoice formats to make getting these invoices into your payment-approval process an automated, touchless and on-time experience.

David Sonenstein - Vice President of Product Strategy

AMI Strategies

With over 20 years in the industry, David helps orchestrate AMI’s vision for vendor hyperautomation. While contributing to AMI’s adoption of automation technologies, system integrations and technology frameworks, his research focuses on enterprise market and technology trends and where automation solutions can help organizations achieve their desired business outcomes. He currently serves on the executive board of the Enterprise Technology Management Association (ETMA) and is an associate of the Technology Business Management (TBM) Council.