22 Oct Vendors Invoices and Their Discontents
Vendor invoices arrive daily in all manner of formats from PDFs to EDI and more. And still you get paper invoices (no two alike). You wrangle these diverse documents into your system for processing. But format is just a part of the story. What about volume? How many invoices do you receive in a month? Did you know that however many you get, an industry survey suggests that on average you should expect to get a vendor inquiry on 11 percent of those invoices? Vendors send invoices; but discontent with merely having sent the invoice, they call or email you about an invoice more than one out ten times. That’s a lot of inquiries. Inquiries take time to address, i.e. time away from processing, or compliance, or analysis, etc. Most of these inquiries — about 80 percent — are simple questions like “Did you get our invoice?” “Has our invoice been paid?” or “When will our invoice be paid?” These questions can be quickly answered once AP staff has stopped what they’re doing to look it up. How long does it take for an AP staffer to handle a vendor inquiry? On average, it takes eight minutes. However, that does not count the...