How to calculate the ROI of AP automation in NetSuite

56% of accounts payable (AP) teams spend over 10 hours a week processing manual invoices – but that doesn’t mean they’re doing everything by hand. 56% are also partially automated, but the lack of full P2P maturity means 82% are still bottlenecked around manual invoice issues. 

These issues are costly, and that’s why every business needs to evaluate the ROI of AP automation solutions as a matter of competitive necessity. Zone’s AP Automation ROI Calculator can show you the cost of “traditional” AP processing and the direct benefits across your business of automated processing. 

How AP automation can help your business

Ask around: 70% of CFOs view digital transformation through automation in areas like accounts payable as critical for their company’s survival, and 60% point to manual workflows as their biggest challenge. These leaders understand that their company is struggling to keep up with more automated competitors, and they’re looking to leverage the following benefits:

1. Streamlined workflows: While using modern AP tools, your team members will be able to view and approve invoices from any workstation. 
2. Increased accuracy: Thanks to automated invoice capture, you’ll nearly eliminate human error from your AP workflow.
3. Faster financial close: AP software can automate tasks like credit card reconciliation and transaction matching, allowing you to complete your financial close process as quickly as possible.
4. Improved vendor relationships: It’s not hard to see how invoice processing delays can frustrate vendors. On the other hand, AP automation helps businesses process their invoices with maximum efficiency – keeping vendors happy as a result.
5. Enhanced insights: When your AP process is fully automated and integrated into NetSuite, you’ll get a better view of your financial data than ever before.

Calculate AP automation ROI with easeThe points above should help you understand some of the biggest reasons why AP automation matters. But before you can justify making this switch, you’ll need concrete data on the financial benefits involved – and that’s where Zone & Co’s ROI Calculator comes in. This powerful tool doesn’t just give users a simplified look at how AP automation can improve their company’s accounts payable department. Instead, you’ll get a detailed breakdown of the ROI (in an actual dollar amount) that AP automation will deliver for your business.To get started, open the calculator in your browser and input the volume of vendor bills your organization processes each month. As soon as you type in that data point, you’ll see your business’s:

• Current average cost of processing a vendor bill
• Estimated cost for this job with AP automation
• Savings per bill
• Cost reduction per bill as a percentage
• Monthly/annual savings
• Average annual cost of AP automation software
• Net annual savings
• Annual ROI

The AP automation ROI calculator in action

Next, let’s look at an example of what this tool can do for you. Imagine you’re an AP manager at a medium-sized company that still relies on manual AP processing. If your business deals with 7,500 vendor invoices in an average month, type this number into the calculator next to “Volume of Monthly Vendor Bills.” 

After you do that, you’ll learn you’re spending about $16 to process a single invoice. On the other hand, this expense would fall to $4.64 if your company had assistance from AP automation software. That equates to $11.36 in savings per bill, or a per-bill cost reduction of 71%.

Over the course of a month, your business would save a total of $85,200 after switching to an automated accounts payable workflow. That would equate to $1,022,400 in savings after a full year. And while AP automation software would cost you roughly $45,000 in that timespan, your net annual savings would be $977,400 – giving you a yearly ROI of 2,172%

How our AP automation ROI calculator works

Zone’s AP automation tool is based on a study conducted by Goldman Sachs which found the potential net savings of companies that adopted AP automation. Like the calculator, that study separated its results into three segments: 

1. Small companies (businesses processing fewer than 3,000 vendor invoices/month)
2. Medium companies (businesses processing 3,000-9,999 vendor invoices/month)
3. Large companies (businesses processing 10,000+ vendor invoices/month)

Using Zone & Co tools for AP automation

No matter how big or small your company is, AP automation can provide significant cost savings and many other perks. Still, you’ll need the right software to unlock these benefits. Here’s how Zone & Co tools can help:

ZoneCapture

When you use ZoneCapture, you’ll be able to put OCR and AI technology to use in your AP workflow. That way, you’ll be able to save over 25 hours per week on AP-related tasks, process invoices more than 83% faster and reduce errors by over 90%.

When Amiga Mobility International Inc. faced an overloaded AP department that was stalling out their financial strategy, they needed a solution that could streamline PO matching and up their accuracy rate. ZoneCapture automated invoice captures through NetSuite and eliminated four months of manual work per year. 

ZoneApprovals

Along with allowing your AP team to automate and simplify its approval processes, ZoneApprovals lets people handle these processes without leaving NetSuite. This tool can deliver total audit visibility, the ability to process hundreds of approvals in bulk and a 99% reduction in approval errors.

After experiencing 50% growth in four years, e-bike innovator enviolo was spinning its wheels to keep pace with invoice processing, approvals and reconciliation. By implementing ZoneApprovals, they were able to harmonize approval workflows, invoice booking and bank reconciliation directly in NetSuite to deliver the automation edge they needed. 

ZoneReconcile

With the help of ZoneReconcile, you can speed up reconciliation by 95% and cut reconciliation errors by 99%. You’ll also be able to connect with customers across credit card, SFTP and PSP accounts.

As BLUNT Umbrellas revolutionized how people face a rainy day, their finance department was becoming swamped by the complexities of international multi-bank reconciliation and PSP integration. With ZoneReconcile, they were able to outshine the competition by effortlessly reconciling thousands of transactions a day through NetSuite with line-level transaction visibility.

Find out what Zone & Co can do for you

Whether you’ve thought about using AP automation for years or you’re finally hitting a wall with growth and scaling, it’s not too late to make the move. Better yet, you won’t have to do painstaking research to see how automating accounts payable can help your company. Thanks to our AP Automation ROI Calculator, understanding the financial benefits an investment in the right software integration can deliver is as simple as entering a single number.

If you’ve decided to add AP automation to your workflow, Zone & Co’s solutions are a perfect fit for the job. See the benefits of tools like ZoneCapture, ZoneReconcile and ZoneApprovals for yourself by requesting a demo today!