Focus On Whether At Automation Should Be Implemented

Argumentative Synthesis
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Argumentative Synthesis
In the current age of modern technologies where computers have become a central feature in the organizations, evidence indicates that companies are moving towards automation of their activities to ensure that process is able to run smoothly in all departments. Barnum (2018) argues that account payable (AP) automation processes tend to streamline the activities of the accounts payable department to ensure that manual processes are reduced while operational efficiency is improved. This ultimately reduces the overall cost of the organization. The same arguments are shared by Praeger (2018) who says that the paper-based processes can sink an organization since, on a normal day, the department would be filled with a huge capacity of manual workload that can make it difficult to streamline the entire payment processes. Therefore, AP automation plays an instrumental role involved in enhancing accurate filing of financial documents. This paper argues that accounts payable should be automated.
AP automation processes improve the efficiency of an organization and the way it handles its business processes, which ultimately leads to reduced cost of operations. A department may be tasked with the role of handling multiple tasks, be it comparing signed checks against purchase orders, invoices, or bills of landing. In some organizations, these activities are conducted manually and it can be very tasking if multitudes of documents have to be compared (Uwen, 2016). It is from this perspective that AP automation can have a significant impact on improving the efficiency of an organization. However, some critics argue that AP automation processes may be unnecessary to smaller firms, especially those institutions that have limited resources. However, to counter such an argument, evidence indicates that the cost that a business incurs while relying on the outdated, manual, and paper-based approaches is very high. Barnum (2018) says that to cost of printing, reviewing, handling remittances, manual entry of data, and other activities can cost a firm anywhere between $8 and $10 per invoice. This is a massive cost especially when a business is handling hundreds of these paper transactions.
The most prominent part of AP automation processes is that it eliminates the lag time that may occur when an organization wants to compare financial statements. For instance, consider an organization that has multiple branches in different parts of the country and all the branches have to send invoices to the head office for data entry and reconciliation. If one branch wants to recall such documents for reconciliation purposes, it may take an extended period and cost which would ultimately affect efficiency and productivity (Barnum, 2018). In such a situation, AP automation would significantly minimize the activities that a business needs to move forward since all financial statements are automated. Instead of mailing bulk documents to a central location, employees can scan, fax and email these documents to the required locations. Furthermore, an automated system provides an efficient mechanism of recalling instead of wasting time while waiting for the invoices to ...