It’s easy to get frustrated with accounting cost issues, as you could be focused on growing your business. One way to save money, improve accounting accuracy and free employee time is to integrate an EDI invoice format into your system to eliminate the manual re-keying of paper vendor invoices.
One of our long-time customers found themselves in this very predicament. Realizing they needed to be better able to handle the hundreds of paper invoices flooding their office every week, Bright Software was able to offer a suggestion because their largest supply vendor used EDI. EDI, or “Electronic Data Interchange” is, in its simplest definition, a way to interchange business information in a standardized format.
Hundreds of thousands of businesses use EDI globally as a standard to transfer data—mainly orders and invoices. Its greatest strength is in eliminating repetitive manual entry that is required to maintain a business relationship.
In this case, the customer’s crew of licensed electricians were constantly in need of electrical supplies for any number of open jobs at a time. Every week the front office had a stack of paper invoices for switches, wire, outlets, and any other needed electrical equipment to keep projects moving forward. Their contracting business relies on the relationship with their electrical part suppliers. All of these invoices had to be manually entered in a time-consuming process until their systems were built to accept the electronic transfer of invoices into their database using EDI.
Now the vendor sends a file in EDI format to their servers weekly. The file is saved in their QuickBooks accounting system for payment and each invoice automatically appends to a customer job for historical record. It used to take hours to enter their invoices. Now it’s done automatically.
By spending $8,000 they saved double that per year on what they used to pay for manual data entry. Plus, they reap all the benefits of having these invoices automatically integrated into their customer database: faster processing, instant invoice retrieval, more detailed, accurate customer records, and, because they can pay invoices quicker, they are often rewarded with eligibility for vendor discounts.
Accurate files ensure more accurate supply re-orders, and are easy to search and retrieve if a customer problem should arise. Plus, they print clearly and are much easier to read than faxed copies or multi-part forms.
Bright Software has helped a number of companies take advantage of EDI to improve their business processes and automate redundant tasks. EDI makes sense for a company with high volume use of purchase orders or accounts payable/receivable tasks in relation with another company. Both companies have to be enabled to send files to each other via EDI.
In summary, some of the key benefits of EDI for any company are:
If you would like to explore whether EDI is right for you or expand your current use of EDI, give Bright Software a call.