Author: Sheridan Wilkinson
The challenges presented by invoice processing can weigh heavily on finance teams. Monthly deadlines that rely on accurate data can be difficult with manual, slow processes. Added to this, pressure from management for reports and cash flow updates means real time data is vital.
The common challenges organisations face with manual invoice processing, from data entry errors to slow approvals and poor visibility across finance teams.
How these issues create operational pressure, increase costs, and make it harder to manage matching, compliance, and secure document handling.
DocTech’s aim: to help organisations understand how an automated invoice system can ease pressure and deliver benefits such as early payment discounts, streamlined processes, lower overheads, and reduced stress on staff.
Read more about Automated Invoice Processing in our Ultimate Guide.
As organisations continue to embrace hybrid and fully remote working, business processes must evolve to keep teams connected and productive no matter where they are.
Traditional invoice handling simply doesn’t fit today’s working reality. Passing paper between departments, relying on shared network drives, or coordinating multi-step approvals in the office becomes slow, disjointed, and often impossible when teams are dispersed.
With automated invoice processing, every invoice is captured and stored digitally, giving authorised users secure access from any device, in any location.
Cloud-based workflows remove the dependency on internal networks, slow VPNs, or on-premise systems. Approvals, coding, matching, and archiving can all be completed digitally, mirroring and improving your existing process.
The result? Faster approvals, fewer bottlenecks, improved accuracy, and a finance team that can work efficiently from anywhere.
Finance teams often face delays caused by inaccurate data, missing documents, staff absences, and information trapped on paper or in inboxes. These bottlenecks slow down Accounts Payable, leading to late payments, unnecessary fees, and increased pressure on already stretched teams.
Three-way matching pairing a purchase order with an invoice and delivery note becomes even slower when data is incorrect, incomplete, or stored across multiple systems and folders.
With AP automation, invoice, PO, and delivery note data is captured digitally and accurately within a document management system built specifically for invoice processing.
The technology automatically matches these documents, and when everything aligns, the invoice can move straight through to approval or payment without manual intervention. If something doesn’t match, the system instantly flags it to the right person, ensuring issues are resolved quickly and nothing gets lost in the process.
The result: faster processing, fewer errors, and a smoother, more reliable AP workflow.
Missing invoices and the hours spent hunting for them remain some of the biggest frustrations in invoice processing. When documents are passed around the business in paper form or scattered across emails and network folders, it’s easy for them to be misplaced or overlooked.
Lost invoices don’t just slow things down. They can damage supplier relationships, disrupt accounting accuracy, and create an unreliable view of your organisation’s financial position.
A digital invoice journey ensures that once an invoice enters the system, it cannot be lost and its progress is always visible.
Our solutions securely store and intelligently index your organisation’s critical financial documents, making them instantly searchable from one central location. No more digging through inboxes, folders, filing cabinets, or piles of paper.
If even one employee spends an hour a day searching for the right information, that’s nearly a full working day every week almost the cost of an extra day’s wage. Imagine how much more valuable that time and money could be elsewhere in the business.
With DocTech, invoices stay organised, accessible, and traceable eliminating the chaos of missing documents once and for all.
Manual data entry remains one of the biggest pain points in invoice processing. Even the most detail-oriented employees can make mistakes, especially when entering large volumes of figures under time pressure. Errors slow down approvals, create discrepancies in finance systems, and add unnecessary stress to busy teams.
Automated invoice processing eliminates manual keying altogether. Invoice data is captured accurately and automatically, then passed directly into your finance system or ERP ensuring consistency and reducing the risk of human error.
With data handled by the system, staff regain valuable time to carry out final checks, focus on higher-value tasks, and support the wider finance function. All captured information is indexed and stored for quick retrieval, making audits, queries, and reporting far easier.
The result: cleaner data, faster processing, and a more efficient Accounts Payable team.
Three-way matching is essential for validating supplier invoices. Each invoice must match an existing purchase order and a delivery note to confirm that the goods were ordered and received.
But when documents are stored in different places emails, paper files, network folders tracking everything down becomes slow and frustrating. This manual process drains time, delays payments, and adds to the workload of already busy finance teams.
With automated invoice processing, the invoice, PO, and delivery note are all captured and stored digitally in one system. When the details align matching PO number and an invoice amount that’s equal to or lower than the PO the invoice can be automatically approved for payment, removing the need for manual checks.
If something doesn’t match, the system instantly creates a task for the appropriate person or team, ensuring exceptions are handled quickly and nothing gets overlooked.
The result: faster, more accurate approvals and a smoother Accounts Payable process.
Before any invoice is paid, it must be reviewed and approved by the right people. But manual approval processes often involve multiple checks verifying accuracy, cross-referencing dates, confirming goods or services, validating supplier details, and tracking due dates.
It’s time-consuming, repetitive, and leaves plenty of room for errors or delays. And if the approver is out of the office, the process can grind to a halt.
How DocTech Can HelpWith a fully automated solution, invoice approvals can be routed instantly based on your rules such as invoice amount, supplier, department, or split billing and handled across multiple approval levels.
Electronic workflows keep the process moving, even when someone is unavailable. If an approver doesn’t act within a set timeframe, the system automatically escalates the task to the next person in line.
Approvals can also be completed on mobile devices, allowing staff to keep work flowing whether they're in the office, at home, or on the go.
The result: faster, more consistent approvals and a far smoother payment process.
Without a clear purchase-to-pay process, unauthorised or unapproved purchases can easily slip through. If employees can place orders without raising and approving a purchase order (PO), there’s no visibility or control and mistakes or even fraudulent purchases may only be discovered once the invoice arrives.
At that point, the organisation is often obligated to pay, leaving the business out of pocket and scrambling to tighten internal controls.
With a structured and automated invoice processing workflow, unauthorised purchases are effectively eliminated. Only approved users can create a Purchase Order Requisition, which is then digitally routed to the appropriate manager for authorisation.
Once approved, the requisition flows to finance and any other relevant departments, ensuring full transparency before the order is placed. The approved PO is then sent to the supplier, completing a controlled and trackable order process.
This streamlined, digital approach means no unnecessary paperwork, full control over purchasing, and complete confidence that every order is authorised before any money leaves the business.
When invoice data is buried in paper files or scattered across emails, managers struggle to gain a clear picture of where payments and approvals currently stand. Tracking down answers often means chasing staff, digging through folders, or piecing together information from different systems all of which slows down processing and creates unnecessary frustration.
Invoice processing software gives managers complete visibility and control. Every stage of the payment cycle is tracked in real time, so it’s instantly clear what’s approved, what’s pending, and what needs attention.
Billing discrepancies, payment terms, and performance metrics can all be monitored with accurate reporting, enabling better decision-making and more efficient financial management.
The result: fewer delays, greater oversight, and a smoother, more transparent AP process.
Financial data must be stored securely and managed carefully to prevent loss, misuse, or fraud. With information spread across paper files, inboxes, or unsecured folders, businesses face real risks. Fraud continues to be a major threat, and recent years have only increased opportunities for scammers to exploit weak processes.
Research from BDO shows that six in ten mid-sized UK businesses experienced fraud in 2020, with average losses reaching £245,000 — a stark reminder of how vulnerable financial operations can be without proper controls.
How DocTech Can HelpWith DocuWare, all invoices are stored using AES encryption, and all data traffic is protected via HTTPS with TLS encryption. This ensures that sensitive information from passwords to financial records cannot be intercepted or accessed by unauthorised parties.
Every invoice entering the system is automatically checked against existing supplier records. If something doesn’t match, it’s immediately flagged for review, helping prevent fraudulent invoices from slipping through.
Access permissions can also be tightly controlled, allowing you to define exactly who can read, edit, export, or delete financial data.
This creates a secure, compliant, and fully auditable environment for handling your organisation’s most sensitive information.
Being well prepared for a financial audit is key, and while it can seem daunting to have an auditor expose possible errors, the exercise can prove to be hugely beneficial.
A company’s financial statements, documents, data, reporting systems, cash flow statements, tax returns and balance sheets will all be reviewed.
How DocTech can help:
Having a great invoice processing procedure in place will help as an auditor will be able to see the clearly defined steps of how your process works.
On top of this, having easy digital access to all the supporting documentation will greatly reduce audit preparation time. If required, auditors can be granted read only access to DocuWare so they can easily pick any document they need to view.
As business grows, can your processes grow too or will they buckle under the pressure? An increase in customers and suppliers means more invoices to manage and more staff needed to cope, especially if you reply on manual and paper based processes.
Hiring and training staff are time consuming tasks to carry out each time the volume of invoices increase.
How DocTech can help:
Invoice processing software eliminates manual and repetitive tasks that make it difficult scale up. Automation helps you grow your business while maintaining costs.
At DocTech we understand the many challenges of invoice processing. We have the experience and it’s likely we’ve worked through your challenges with our existing clients.
Organisations need to think about what issues are causing the biggest problems to the bottom line and effecting their employees the most? Buy in from staff when implementing invoice processing software is so important, no-one likes change, but demonstrating the positive impact of this change is key, prior to installation.
info@doctech.co.uk
0161 647 7040