If your Accounts Payable (AP) team feels overwhelmed by the rising workload of supplier inquiries and disputes, you are not alone. A growing trend of increased invoice inquiries and disputes is creating significant challenges for AP, finance, and shared services teams.
Fortunately, strategies exist that allow companies to easily manage this backlog, and to get back in control of their workload. By implementing good systems, solid governance, and automation, handling queries and disputes will indeed become manageable again.
PRGX Supplier Connect works with your existing systems and not only expedites the process, it also helps protect you from unnecessary repayments.
As we see the success of customers using Supplier Connect, we’ve identified 5 strategies for helping AP teams regain control.
An Increase in Automated Disputes
Many large enterprises have thresholds for automatically repaying disputes of a certain size. Although not ideal, this is sometimes more time- and cost-effective than manually addressing each dispute individually. However, some suppliers exploit these thresholds by automating disputes, without valid reasons or evidence. There are now dedicated software tools designed to help companies reclaim as much in disputes as possible by automating the process.
“There is a real increase in invoice inquiries and disputes, and it’s becoming a pain point and a challenge. One of the reasons for that is suppliers are increasing their investments in technology and automation. We’re seeing a pretty drastic spike in bots.”
— Patrick Kelly, Chief Data Intelligence Officer, PRGX
What Happens When AP is Overwhelmed?
This surge in automated disputes can overwhelm AP teams and create significant backlogs.
Some of the common pain points from not dealing efficiently with the volume of disputes, inquires and unnecessary repayments are:
- A continuous backlog of queries.
- High staffing costs and high resource usage for tactical, non-strategic queries, which contributes to low morale.
- Loss of data and information in email inboxes, making query resolution more time-consuming and difficult.
- Automatic repayment of disputes under a certain threshold, triggering unnecessary payments.
- Slow or poor response rate to supplier/user queries, straining supplier relationships
How to Take Back Control in Accounts Payable: A 5 Point Plan
While it can feel overwhelming, there is a clear path and a winning strategy to transform the invoice inquiry and dispute process from a source of conflict to one of collaboration.
To hear Patrick Kelly’s strategies, we invite to watch his recent webinar.
You can also read our whitepaper about successful strategies for inquiry and dispute management.
Implementing these strategies will lead to timely and correct payments, enhanced supplier relationships and overall better business health.
To learn more about Supplier Connect, our AI-powered tool for managing supplier inquiries and disputes, you can request a demo.