The 8 best accounts payable software features
What separates the best AP software solutions from the rest?
While ERPs and basic AP software solutions can streamline tasks like invoice management, the best accounts payable software solutions offer a wider range of benefits. They provide advanced features that go beyond speeding up invoice processing to transform your financial operations.
Most AP automation solutions offer a basic set of features. Leading-edge platforms like Stampli go beyond the basics with advanced vendor management, analytics, ERP integration, and payment features that improve accuracy, reduce errors and fraud, and provide actionable financial insights about your business.
By choosing an AP automation software platform with advanced features, you can optimize your financial management, not just automate accounts payable.
Make smarter decisions about your accounts payable solution. Discover the top 8 key features finance leaders prioritize, explained with real-world examples and Stampli customer insights.
Let’s get started.
1. Streamlined invoice scanning and data entry
The core function of accounts payable automation software is to automate invoice scanning, data entry, and GL coding. Most solutions use optical character recognition (OCR) technology to capture and digitize header and line information from digital and paper invoices. Some solutions also automate GL coding and entering invoice data into ERP systems or accounting software.
Use case: processing a large volume of invoices
A growing company receives 8,000 invoices every month. Their AP team is struggling to keep up with the volume, leading to expensive mistakes and delayed vendor payments. The company automates its invoice processing workflow with an AP software solution to address this. The software automatically extracts the invoice details and enters them into the company’s ERP, reducing errors and saving the AP team significant time.
Smart invoice data extraction
Stampli uses machine learning to learn your invoice capture, entry, and coding processes. Billy the Bot, Stampli’s AI assistant, leverages a massive volume of training data to quickly and accurately understand invoice formats and capture header and line details. Stampli’s solution simplifies invoice handling. It can manage multi-format and multi-page invoices and can process multi-invoice documents.
Unlike other AP software providers, which recommend additional managed services to verify their OCR (Optical Character Recognition) data, Stampli’s invoice capture is fully automated. This makes invoices available to AP teams instantly.
“Emailing and recording invoices with Stampli is wonderful,” says one enterprise customer. “This lets us approve bills, get approvals, and add them to the records without waiting for the physical copy, which can take days or weeks. I appreciate how Stampli’s superior automation has streamlined and fully automated AP processing. I enjoy Stampli’s search and filter capabilities, which allow us to search numerous databases and retrieve the invoices we need, and the convenience of editing fields and exporting and importing reports.”
2. Two- and three-way matching
Many AP software solutions automatically verify invoice details via two- and three-way matching. They compare the invoice data to the purchase order (PO) and/or shipping documents. If there’s a mismatch, the software notifies the user so they can investigate.
Use case: Preventing overpayments
A retailer places a purchase order for office chairs for $10,000. The office furniture vendor ships the chairs but accidentally sends an invoice for $11,500. The AP software identifies the $1,150 discrepancy between the invoice and PO and alerts the AP team. An AP clerk checks the receiving report and confirms that the retailer received a shipment of chairs worth $10,000. The clerk notifies the vendor of the discrepancy, and the vendor sends a corrected invoice for $10,000.
Advanced PO handling capabilities
Many businesses struggle to get visibility into POs and related documents, causing errors and delays while AP teams reconcile data. The matching process is also complicated by inconsistent invoice processing, inaccurate reporting, and poor collaboration between departments. While several accounts payable automation platforms offer PO handling functionality, their solutions are often inflexible, making it difficult for AP teams to accommodate variances or make adjustments while coding.
Stampli integrates with ERPs and business systems to offer real-time PO data and the ability to process PO and non-PO invoices. It automatically extracts the relevant PO data from invoices and provides it on the invoice page in real time. By making the PO data available, Stampli enables easy collaboration between teams, speeds up the matching process, and maintains accuracy between records. Stampli also offers the flexibility to make line-level adjustments, apply multiple POs to an invoice, and bill multiple invoices to a PO, ensuring fast and accurate processing and reporting.
“Stampli makes it incredibly easy to reconcile and closely monitor all invoices in real-time while also ensuring timely approvals,” says a GetApp reviewer. “The approval process is not only efficient but also highly accurate, with the added benefit of a feedback section that enhances accountability. With Stampli, it’s possible to extract invoice data and match it with relevant purchase orders and receipts seamlessly.”
3. Custom workflows and approvals
The workflow engine is the core of AP software. It automates manual AP processes to improve efficiency and pay vendors faster. It’s also scalable, meaning it can handle increasing invoice volumes as your business grows. Most AP software platforms offer pre-built workflows that offer limited customization options. Others let users build custom workflows for processes like approval routing.
Use case: Value-based approval routing
Department heads at a company are being overwhelmed by invoice approval requests. They implement an AP software solution that features customizable approval routing and set up a workflow that directs all invoices over $100,000 to department heads for approval. This reduces the department heads’ workloads while ensuring that high-value invoices are still routed to the appropriate person for approval.
Dynamic workflows with machine learning
Pre-built workflows need to be updated if the underlying business processes change. For example, if a company changes its expense policy to require multiple approvers for certain transaction types, it will need to modify the approval routing workflows in its AP software. Depending on the software, updating these workflows may be a complex process that ties up IT resources or requires help from outside consultants.
Stampli leverages machine learning to make workflows smarter and more efficient. It learns your cost accounting rules and processes and adapts to changes in your workflows. For example, it will suggest approvers for invoices, saving AP employees from having to look up the appropriate approval levels in your expense policy.
Stampli also offers dynamic workflows that automatically reconfigure in response to changes in your business processes without the need for IT rework. One customer describes how this feature helped them manage finance workflows at a multi-location business: “Stampli automated a workflow for us that had previously become an excessive waste of time for an otherwise simple process. As a national company, it helped integrate our teams around accuracy, timing, and process for approvals. Being able to pre-program the workflows make us less error prone, and I especially love how it tracks issues across a period of time for all of the different filters that allow me to narrow in on issues.”
4. Reporting and analytics
Some AP software solutions provide reporting and analytical capabilities to track KPIs and AP performance metrics. These features give you more visibility and control over your AP team’s performance and cash flow management.
Use case: Identifying opportunities for early payment discounts
A company signs a contract with a supplier that offers discounts on invoices paid 15 days before they are due. When the first invoice arrives, the accounts payable manager monitors the invoice processing status in their AP software to ensure the invoice will be processed and paid in time to receive the discount. Over time, the company can anticipate the early payment discount and manage its cash flow accordingly.
Simplified real-time reporting improves visibility and control
Many AP software solutions provide reporting and forecasting capabilities. However, their effectiveness is compromised by complex workflows that require AP employees to follow complicated multi-step processes to generate or access reports.
Stampli presents invoice data and metrics in a single, easy-to-use interface that provides users with the information they need. “Stampli has been a game changer with automating our AP process,” says a Stampli customer. “It’s so helpful to have all invoices, comments, approvals, reporting, and more in one place that also integrates with our accounting system and it’s used on a daily basis.”
5. Integrated payment processing
Many AP software packages offer integrated payment processing features to let businesses pay vendors. These features can include payment scheduling, payment methods (check, ACH, credit card), batch payment processing, and bank account reconciliations. Some payment solutions also provide global payment features such as international payments and foreign exchange risk management.
Use case: Payment automation for hybrid workplaces
A multi-location company with a hybrid workforce wants to eliminate paper checks. AP employees must travel to a company location to process paper checks, a slow manual process that is slowing down vendor payments. The company implements an AP software solution with an integrated payment processing system that allows electronic payments. They move their suppliers onto the system and significantly reduce the number of checks they issue each month.
Real-time spend management
ERP payment modules and some AP automation solutions can automate payment processing, but they often lack the ability to help you track and control AP spending. AP solutions with integrated payment solutions, like Stampli and Stampli Direct Pay, combine payment automation with real-time visibility into your spending. One customer says that with Stampli and Stampi Direct Pay, “Our invoice approval process has been brought to the next level, and has been standardized…We have the Direct Pay add-on and marveled and the increase in visibility and control while still saving time over stuffing and stamping envelopes…For a ‘can’t deny it’ data point: in our 2nd week on Stampli, we processed more invoices than we ever had in a week, and had the lowest number of invoices pending approval since we’ve tracked that stat.”
6. Vendor management
Some AP automation platforms feature automated vendor management systems. These systems improve vendor relationships by simplifying manual tasks like maintaining vendor documents, managing communications, and ensuring vendor compliance with contract terms and regulations.
Use case: Improving vendor collaboration
A company wants to centralize communications with vendors. It implements an AP solution platform that features an automated vendor portal. Vendors can use the portal to send invoices, ask questions, upload documents, and check payment status. By centralizing communications, the portal makes it easy to track and record messages and keep a complete audit trail.
Advanced vendor portals foster collaboration
Leading AP automation platforms offer advanced vendor portals that centralize vendor management functions. Stampli Advanced Vendor Management streamlines vendor onboarding and document management by automatically collecting vendor details and required documents and reminding vendors when information is out of date. For example, a building contractor can use Advanced Vendor Management to ensure subcontractors submit licenses and certifications before hiring them for a project.
One Stampli customer in health care says, “Stampli provides a compatible platform with our accounting software system that helps make the payment process easier…The vendor management portal has also been very helpful to our vendors in updating their information with us and asking us questions on specific invoices.”
7. Virtual cards
Some AP software providers offer physical and virtual credit cards to facilitate vendor payments. Virtual cards allow businesses to pay vendors instantly. Some also offer cash-back incentives that refund a percentage of each transaction to the business. Many virtual card providers provide a management platform that enables businesses to monitor card transactions in real time, providing greater protection against fraud and unauthorized purchases.
Use case: Reduce fraud risk with a new vendor
A company wants to pay a new vendor and manage its fraud risk. It creates a new virtual card number to make the first invoice payment. After the payment is made to the supplier, the company deactivates the virtual card, eliminating the risk that the card details could be compromised and used. The virtual card platform will detect any attempts to use the deactivated number, alerting the company to the potential risk of fraud with the new vendor.
Control AP spend with advanced virtual cards
Stampli Card ensures credit card transactions are as manageable as invoices. Featuring physical and virtual cards, Stampli Card offers AP and expense cards with advanced features like customizable approval workflows, real-time visibility and control over transactions, and the ability to pre-code purchases, Stampli Card optimizes your AP processes and ensures that your card transactions comply with your financial policies.
“I like the Stampli Card the most,” says a Stampli customer. “Being able to track business expenses without having to chase down every employee for physical forms saves a ton of time…Stampli is solving credit card expenses. Going from an excel sheet that needs over 100+ physical forms with signatures is tedious and inefficient.”
8. ERP Integration
Most AP software solutions offer integration with ERPs and accounting software to facilitate data sharing. Integration helps businesses keep accounting records current, reconcile bank statements, and make data and documents accessible across the organization.
Use case: Multi-entity accounts payable management
A company with several subsidiaries wants to centralize its accounts payable on one system. Their current ERP doesn’t provide multi-entity support for AP, so they need a solution that provides this functionality while integrating with their ERP. They select an AP software platform that provides multi-entity processing, letting them combine their AP processes. The software also offers API integration with their ERP, letting them update their financial records across their subsidiaries.
Seamless no-code ERP integrations boost AP efficiency
Stampli’s pre-built ERP integrations ensure seamless integration with over 70 ERPs and accounting platforms. They support the full native functionality of your ERP with no coding or ERP rework. Your AP team can focus on the tasks at hand rather than navigating multiple windows, finding workarounds for glitchy integrations, or dealing with sync issues.
“In an era where time is of the essence and efficiency is paramount, Stampli stands out as a beacon of simplicity and effectiveness,” raves one GetApp reviewer. “One of the standout features of Stampli is its seamless integration with existing accounting systems. Regardless of whether your organization utilizes QuickBooks, NetSuite, or another platform, Stampli seamlessly integrates, eliminating the need for tedious manual data entry and ensuring data accuracy.”
Top 5 benefits of accounts payable automation
In 2023, Stampli and Probolsky Research asked 248 CFOs, finance leaders, and AP employees for their insights on accounts payable automation. These are the five most important benefits they cited:
- Improving accuracy: AP automation reduces invoice processing errors and prevents duplicate or missed payments.
- Improving processing speeds: Automation eliminates slow manual tasks and streamlines approval and payment processing.
- Deeper/faster data analysis: AP software solutions provide timely and accurate real-time data that gives finance leaders visibility and control over team performance and invoice processing and helps detect and prevent fraud.
- Cutting costs: Automation improves employee productivity, enabling AP teams to process invoices faster without needing to add headcount.
- Improved financial system efficiency: AP solutions boost accounting efficiency across the board by integrating and sharing real-time data with ERPs.
Stampli delivers on these benefits to give businesses total control of their AP spending.
“What I love about Stampli is its transformative efficiency in invoice processing. Since integrating, our workflow has soared with faster processing, reduced errors, and enhanced transparency for approvers…Stampli has revolutionised our AP team by addressing multiple challenges head-on. Its streamlined invoice processing has notably reduced our processing times, while “Billy the Bot” optimizes tasks and boosts the accuracy of data entered,” says a Stampli customer.
“The user-friendly platform enhances transparency and efficiency for approvers, simplifying the approval process, which is a critical part of our invoice processing. The exceptional support from Stampli’s team…ensured we had a smooth integration and swift issue resolution along the way.”
The only financial automation solution centered on accounts payable
Stampli is the only AP software solution designed for accounts payable. Its unique interface centralizes all documentation, communication, and information around the invoice, so AP teams have the resources they need, right where they need them.
Transform your accounts payable processing today. Contact Stampli to arrange a free demo.
