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The Grand Vision: 100% AP Automation

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The recent economic downturn, difficult credit situation, and increasing costs have all arrived together. For many companies, this has forced them to take a closer look at their internal processes as they seek ways to cut costs, improve efficiencies and increase bottom lines.

One area we are seeing a lot of interest in is Accounts Payable (AP) automation, with many companies striving to make it 100% automation.

100%-AP-Automation

For these companies, cutting costs associated with the AP process, automating it, making it less time consuming and providing panoramic visibility to decision makers in Finance is a no-brainer. Take the example of Zappos – restructuring their financial processes reduced their month-end closing process by 10 days. For a $1Billion company, that is huge!

So what are some of the key areas that CFOs, Controllers, AP Managers, Purchasing Managers are looking to improve their internal processes with relative ease while contributing to the organization’s overall mission to streamline costs?

Automation is the key to efficiency (and success)

Consider the inefficiencies in a non-automated, manual, paper-based process:

  • An Aberdeen Group study found that it can take anywhere from 3.5 to 15 days to process a single invoice. (The industry average for 50% of companies is 11 days to process a single invoice. Yikes!). The cost of processing can range from $5 to $25 for a single invoice
  • On the T&E expense report side of things, another Aberdeen report found that it can take anywhere from 3 to 22 days to reconcile and reimburse a expense report. The cost of processing an expense report manually is $35.28 versus $10.75 for companies that have an automated process
  • This includes the costs associated with manual processing, shuffling paper between individuals and departments, exceptions processing, missing data/receipts, accrual delays, failed audits, duplicates, and late payment fees

On the other hand, the efficiencies gained by automating these AP processes produce results that are definitely dramatic. These include a:

  • 92-96% reduction in paperwork
  • Greater than 29% improvement in labor productivity

Another way to look at this comparison is even if you have dedicated data entry staff and devices to help with managing the manual process, you can typically process 1,000 documents (invoices & expense reports) a month per full-time employee (FTE). By contrast, automated and rules-based matching increases that number to 6,500-9,000 documents a month per FTE.

Conclusion: Automation not only brings significant efficiencies to the AP process, but also helps grow the business with existing staff. Basically, you can do more with less.

Control – at your fingertips

By automating as much of the AP process as possible, you get greater control and better visibility into spend. And this applies to invoices and expenses. While rules, routing, policies can be configured to unique company configurations, the biggest advantage is being able to review spend on an expense report or invoice in a timely manner. Not having to review every single transaction means there is more time to focus on important violations that require attention.

Automating the process also captures the document and additional data so that AP Managers have full visibility into the process. No more expense receipts or invoices hiding on individual desks. AP and Finance can now maintain a more real-time view of their corporate spend at any point in time, thereby providing more control.

Conclusion: Automation results in greater, not less, control over your internal Accounts Payable process.

But what if this is too expensive

There are many solutions that offer end-to-end AP automation using the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model that require no upfront purchases. Choosing an AP solution that is offered as a service allows the company to truly pay-as-they-go! And with a typical SaaS model, the company can expect periodic upgrades and new features that add more value. This means companies can now reach their ROI much faster than before.

Conclusion: Automating the Accounts Payable process is more than ever available to a wider range of budgets.

Does company size matter?

Cloud-based solutions coupled with a SaaS business model offer a very low marginal cost to get started. With economies of scale and best practices, everyone benefits from automation. And, as discussed earlier, automation enables AP to focus on more strategic activities, such as, sourcing, reporting, spend analytics and vendor management.

Conclusion: Even small companies can save significant $$. Some research reports suggest annual savings can range from 4 to 17% of annual spend. Even for a small company, that can be big bucks!

How can analytics help?

Imagine now, you have all of this automation and data at your fingertips. How about a quick report on outstanding invoices for vendor ABC, LLC? How about a ‘spend to-date’ report on the AMEX corp. card for T&E expenses? Being able to massage the data and use it to arrive at meaningful conclusions is the key aspect of Analytics and Reporting modules. Providing such data to decision makers like AP Managers or CFOs provides tremendous value for the company to plan better, conserve money and be very strategic about growth. Several cloud-based solutions for Invoices & Expenses provide out of the box reporting and analytics that companies should definitely consider and incorporate.

Conclusion: With the amount of data churned out today, intelligent analytics is really a no-brainer. Smart companies utilize this data, make sense out of it and provide it to decision makers to really boost growth or drastically cut costs for companies. By paying attention to this, companies can put money back in their pockets.

Summary

It is very obvious to see that the benefits of AP automation are huge and cannot be ignored for the typical 21st century company. Let’s take a quick look at them again:

  • Huge labor savings across the company
  • Efficiency boost while processing Invoices & Expenses
  • Reduced delays
  • Improved transparency
  • Panoramic visibility for decision makers

Whether the architecture is cloud-based and delivered as SaaS or an On-Premise Hosted solution, the move will get a company closer to becoming paperless. Automating and streamlining Invoices & Expenses will also provide a secure and serviceable archive for data.

Finally, process improvements can be realized in days, rather than months, resulting in a rapid ROI. This will leave the company with an end-to-end 100% automated AP solution that increases compliance, cuts costs, and reduces cycle times.

Now that’s a grand vision. But very much achievable!

Expense Tracking for Dynamics GP and Goodbye Business Portal in GP 2015

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Microsoft officially announced that Business Portal and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 runtime will be discontinued in Microsoft Dynamics GP 2015. They plan to focus instead on including most of the functionalities directly into the core code base of Dynamics GP 2015.

“The plan is to basically phase out Business Portal as we release apps or modules inside Dynamics GP that replace the same functionality”, said Microsoft’s Kelly Obach, Manager of the Executive Business Center.

Business Portal has been an important and integral part of Dynamics GP for many years. Users could gain a quick peek into a company’s data and run graphical reports quickly. Of course all the goodness did not come without challenges, ranging from software requirements, tricky admin functionality of the module and proprietary architecture. Business Portal also provided a basic non-mobile solution for capturing project related expenses.

GP 2015 Features (Click on Image)

For customers looking to upgrade to Dynamics GP 2015 from older versions or for customers looking to migrate to GP 2015 from other systems, Business Portal will no longer be available. If T&E Expense Management in Dynamics GP is an important requirement for your business, what do you do?

That’s where ISVs like Gorilla Expense fill the gap with our expense reporting software for GP, which integrates with various versions (GP 10, GP 2010, GP 2013). While Microsoft Dynamics brings great features to the core ERP product, we bring the robust expense related pieces which include Mobile Apps, Web Application, Credit Card Integration and seamless + fully Automated Integration into Dynamics GP using our proprietary Integration App.

Not only does it solve the challenges and pain points for the customer, it also enhances capabilities within GP. Check out the video of our automated integration with GP (VIDEO)

Our solution is not only powerful but also very easy to use and intuitive. And most importantly, we pride ourselves in providing the best support you have ever seen from an ISV. Our goal is to ‘Wow!’ the customer every time. Don’t believe us? See what our customers are saying about us (TESTIMONIALS)

As a Premium GPUG member, you can also view the webinar we did with GPUG on ‘Make T&E Expense Reporting for Dynamics GP Painless & Paperless’ here (WEBINAR)

GPUG Premium Member

If you are interested in a personalized demo of our expense management software for Dynamics GP, contact us at sales@gorillaexpense.com

Demystify Expense Reporting and Integration of T&E Data to GP

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Ask any traveling employee or AP Manager for a task they dislike the most in their day-to-day work. The inevitable answer will be – expense reporting.

Let’s face it – expense reports are despised, they are delayed, they are viewed as distractions and simply considered to be a hassle. But they are a necessary element of today’s increasingly mobile workforce. With corporate cards, foreign currencies, cash advances and many other moving pieces, expense reports continue to be daunting. And that is where technology and automation comes to the rescue.

Many companies struggle to tackle challenges and take firm steps with automating the expense reporting process because of not knowing where to start, when it comes to automating the process. Aberdeen Research Group’s report (‘Expense Management for a New Decade and The Mid-Market Expense Management Program’) says that:

* 56% of mid-market companies have limited visibility into T&E spending

* Only 33% leverage cloud-based expense reporting solutions

* Only 28% utilize corporate credit cards and integrate the data in T&E systems

* Just 15% provide T&E data to C-level executives for financial forecasting purposes

The good news is that cloud-based T&E software’s like Gorilla Expense have significantly brought down the cost of automating the expense reporting process. The software provides significant reduction in expense processing costs and removes frustrations for the travelers and accounting teams.

To reap the benefits and take the hassle out of this process, here are three steps that companies can execute on immediately:

1> Automate the T&E process to eliminate manual work while utilizing the latest technology

Gorilla Expense provides multiple options for users to submit expenses – mobile, web, corporate credit card import and email forwarding. By utilizing the mobile app, the entire expense report can be submitted from the mobile device by the user without having to get in front of a computer!

The advantage for the user is that the expenses are done immediately after incurred along with all the relevant information including expense categorizations and receipts. Since the managers can approve expense reports on the mobile device, their work becomes quick and simple too.

2> Integrate the expense data into Dynamics GP and stop manual data entry

Once the expense report is approved, the most preferable way is to send the data to GP without having to manually key in the data.

Gorilla Expense’s ‘1-click’ integration can send the data to GP in seconds with a single click! The standard and most common integration is to Payables within GP. Here, Gorilla Expense sends expense data as a Payable Transaction Entry within the Purchasing module.

Gorilla Expense can also integrate the data to the Project module in GP for project related expenses. The project managers can be setup as approvers in the chain so that there is full visibility of T&E spend related to projects.

3> Educate employees regularly on expense report related policies and processes

Companies that are serious about tackling the challenges associated with a manual T&E process must provide clear guidelines to employees and communicate them consistently.

When it comes to policies, companies must inform and educate employees about what are considered soft violations, what are hard violations and what are the ramifications for breaking policies.  Companies must appoint a designated expert who can answer questions from employees and clarify doubts.

In conclusion, by simply following these 3 steps, companies can derive benefits immediately and make life easier for the road warriors and accounting personnel. And that’s a sure-fire way of improving productivity and cutting costs overnight versus a manual expense process that can be wasteful and reckless.

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Interested in visualizing the benefits of T&E automation? Curious to see how the various moving pieces like corp. card, mobile expenses come together? Want to see the GP integration in action?

Join us on the webinar to learn more and see a live demo of the solution.

Dynamics GP Credit Card Integration

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Gorilla Expense offers a robust and fully automated integration of credit card data into Dynamics GP. This is available for all versions of GP (GP10 and above). Using our proprietary Gorilla Expense Integration App, the AP Manager can import credit card transactions (or the App can do it automatically), auto-categorize the transactions to specific expense types/cost categories using our mapping algorithm and then send the data to GP with a click of a button. Any relevant information supplied by the credit card company in the data file can also be referenced in the ‘Memo’ field in GP, within Payables > Distributions.

The advantages that the Gorilla Integration App offers are:

* Send credit card data to GP through automation

* Complete visibility of credit card expenses in GP

* Prevent duplicate expenses in GP

* Improve the reconciliation process through reporting and analytics within Gorilla Expense

* Eliminate time consuming manual work of keying in data

Gorilla Expense supports integration with all the major credit card companies – AMEX, VISA and MasterCard and their various file formats. The flavors of credit cards that we support range from the standard Corporate Credit Card for T&E Expenses to Purchase Cards or P-Cards for making purchases on behalf of the employer.

Here is how the process works:

Step 1> The AP Manager opens the Gorilla Integration App and logs in as the Admin. Here we have selected GP2013 as the system to send the data to. The Integration App is typically accessed by the Admin user (belongs to Accounting/AP/IT etc.) in a company.

Logging into Integration App as Admin

Step 2> Once logged in we want to select and import the credit card file supplied by the card provider that is typically downloaded by the Admin on a weekly or monthly basis. In this example, we are using a file supplied by our AMEX corporate card on a monthly basis. The following screenshot shows how the Admin can select the respective card and its format.

Selecting the card and format

**Note: Depending on how the credit card program is setup and services offered by the card provider, Step 2 can be fully automated with no human intervention. In that case, the Gorilla Integration App will automatically ‘pick up’ and import the latest file supplied by the card provider from an FTP site. AMEX typically enables this offering by default for all their corporate card and P-card programs and Gorilla Expense supports this approach**

In the screenshot below, the admin has selected the AMEX file – ‘Transactions.csv’ for import. The file was downloaded from our online AMEX account.

Selecting the file downloaded from the AMEX website

Step 3> Once the file is selected, the Integration App automatically associates the expense type and vendor using our mapping algorithm as shown in the screenshot below. This makes the transactions complete and no manual work is need to categorize the transactions.

Auto-allocation of expense type and vendor

Step 4> The Admin can now select all transactions or select specific transactions to import into the system and send to GP. The screenshot below shows that two transactions were selected to send to GP. Out of the two, only the one shaded in Green was sent. The transaction shaded in Yellow was already submitted earlier and is highlighted as a duplicate transaction. The Gorilla Integration App prevents duplicate transactions from being sent to GP by using the ‘Unique Identifier’  number supplied by the credit card as part of their file. This a is a powerful feature that saves AP Managers lots of time in checking for duplicates and also makes the reconciliation process easier.

Import transactions and prevent duplicates

Step 5> Once all the transactions are imported into the Gorilla application, they are dragged and dropped into a batch and send to GP through automation using the same Integration App. The transactions show up as invoices within a batch called ‘GORILLA’. Depending on the payment method defined in the Gorilla application, the invoices are created to pay the employee or the corporate credit card.

In this example, our AMEX card has the payment method defined as AMEX which is tied to the ‘AMEX’ Vendor ID defined in GP. Here are a couple of screenshots that show the expense data in GP > Payables.

Invoice in Payables

When Distributions is opened, the details from the transactions, namely the vendor and the report number are also made available to provide additional visibility for the CFO / accounting manager and to make it easier to search for expense data in GP.

Distributions in GP

This explains how credit card data can be integrated into GP using the Gorilla Expense Integration App. The App is very flexible in allowing credit card data from multiple cards and various formats to be imported into the system. If you would like to see a live demo of the App or have any additional questions, please contact us at info@gorillaexpense.com