When one thinks of historical office work one always thinks of clerks as in a Charles Dickens novel, forced to work in poor light, recording figures in columns, using a pencil and never allowed to get another until the one in use was but a short stub. Nowadays of course very little work is done using pencils and the days of people working in unheated rooms in poor light have long gone.
Nevertheless the flow of paper just keeps on growing. Let us consider the process of procurement in a busy retail chains store.
Each buyer has a certain budget with which to buy goods and turn the stock over 12 times a year. There may be 10 buyers each with 100 product lines for which they are responsible. They will enter into negotiations with suppliers and place orders for goods to be delivered to the various stores in appropriate quantities. A copy of each order will go to the supplier, a copy to the store, and a copy to the accounts payable department.
When the goods arrive at the store the receiving department, will then marry the delivery note to the order, so as to be sure that the goods have in fact been ordered, then receive the goods and endorse the delivery note with any shortages etc and then sign a copy and give a copy to the delivery driver, retain a copy and then send a copy, along with a goods received voucher (GRV), to the accounts payable department, who must then marry the GRV and delivery note to the original order.
At some stage the supplier is going to submit an invoice to the company which will arrive in the accounts payable department and must then be married to the order, the GRV and delivery note. This will then be processed for payment.
Many of the large chains, watching their cash flow will then take a view on exactly when this will be paid. If there is any advantage, such as an attractive settlement discount they may pay in 7 days. Failing that they may wait for a statement of account, another piece of paper to be married to the set already mentioned, and then pay on 30 or 60 or even 90 days. (that is bye the bye and is a retailers own policy depending how strong they are and how much the suppliers want their business.)
The point of this all is that within the accounts payable department, for one order , there will be at least 5 or six pieces of paper which need to be married together and then filed in such a manner as the auditors can track.
Accounts Payable Processing could be so much easier if as soon as a piece of paper arrived it was immediately converted to a computer entry and all the marrying up, processing, authorization and decision making on payment dates etc could be made online.
This is what is available using a scanning and optical character recognition system can offer. It immediately reduces the paper flow within a department and thus reduces the costs and the dangers of snafu's.
Accounts Payable Processing is an exercise in moving papers around. Here is a way to cut paper flow.