Libeo: The future of invoice management is digital

by Pierre Dutaret, CEO and Co-Founder, Libeo

Digital transformation is on the rise across all industries, with tools constantly being adopted by companies to help them automate processes and conduct business activities through efficient means. The COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent advent of flexible and remote working have boosted the development of digital solutions across all sectors – something underway for years before. One industry leveraging the journey to digital transformation is accounting.

Though the wave of digital transformation has impacted companies of all sectors and sizes, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in particular can benefit significantly from such tools to support invoice management and automate payments. At the start-up and scale-up stages, SMEs can be sensitive to economic and financial uncertainty caused by limited resources, including the most valuable of all – time. By automating processes to save time, SME business owners and their employees can prioritise business areas that drive resilience and growth.

Risks associated with traditional invoice management

Manual invoice management is a lengthy and repetitive process, including receiving, identifying, categorising, filing and transferring invoices. Given the multitude of steps and attention to detail involved, as a traditional process, it is prone to human error. Such errors can cause companies to incur financial and reputational risks, such as failing to pay invoices before deadlines, processing and paying duplicate invoices, or entering the wrong amount to be paid or incorrect bank account details. Beyond being liable to pay fees for unpaid or incorrectly-paid invoices, SMEs’ reputations may suffer from mispayment to suppliers, which can hinder future business development prospects.

Moreover, poor financial and invoice management can incur indirect costs on companies. The most notable of these is time – an invaluable resource, particularly for SMEs. Considering the lengthiness of the invoice management process when conducted by manual, offline methods, financial directors, accountants, and bookkeepers can spend up to five working days per month processing invoices. Automating invoice management and payments would allow companies to dedicate more time and resources to activities and endeavours to creative, planning, business development and strategy – upskilling those in manual, repetitive roles.

Mitigating risks through digital transformation

Adopting digital transformation tools empowers companies to automate their processes, including invoice management and payments. By relying on the accuracy provided by technologically-driven tools, business owners are given the guarantee that invoices are processed correctly, winning them back their time.

Companies can engage with their business more effectively by adopting digital invoice management software, dedicating time and resources to drive revenue and profitability. In the case of SMEs, this assurance and efficiency can be a driving force in the company’s ability to expand operations and grow exponentially – helping business owners and employees focus on the things that matter.