Whether your business is dealing with a high or low volume of paper invoices, there is a better way to manage the data transfer from each invoice to your back-office or accounting system. Electronic Data Interchange, or EDI, revolutionizes invoice workflows for B2B transactions through automation, freeing up time and resources. This technology has existed since the 1960s, but many businesses still defer to traditional data exchange practices that can clog up efficiency.
Fintech provides EDI services for your alcohol invoice line-item data across all your locations and distributors. With our EDI integration, you’ll receive clean, timely, and accurate invoice data that helps with inventory visibility, reduces external costs, and helps with reconciliation and bookkeeping. Let’s review several EDI benefits that turn it from a “nice-to-have” to a “must-have” for your business.
1) Cost Savings
EDI invoicing presents multiple cost-saving opportunities. For starters, you can eliminate the need for external accounting services. EDI invoicing also cuts costs on admin labor associated with manual entry. The money saved from paying for hours of manual invoice entry can then be funneled into other business areas.
2) Faster Accessibility
Be more efficient in your day-to-day with EDI invoicing! After prep work and running a busy shift, the last thing you want to do is spend hours entering each invoice at the line level. Fintech clients save an average of eight hours a month by eliminating manual invoice data entry. You can elect for either an automated integration or an electronic data file you upload yourself – either way, you are saving essential time that can be better spent elsewhere.
3) Accuracy
Manual invoice data entry can lead to simple mistakes, like keying in a wrong decimal point or numerical value, that have costly ramifications. These mistakes lead you to investigate clerical errors that are affecting your margins. EDI is also more accurate than other forms of OCR (optical character recognition) tools, as these can sometimes miss data depending on the camera/scanner quality. With EDI, line-item data fields are seamlessly transmitted into your back-office system with guaranteed accuracy.
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4) Visibility
EDI invoicing supports better and faster visibility into your current invoice log. You will have a full view of each invoice in your back-office system, simplifying reconciliation. If you need to go back and pull a specific field in an invoice, know that Fintech’s EDI ensures you can find it quickly. Fintech’s PaymentSource® also stores 15 months of digital invoices for added assurance.
5) Security
EDI integration is much more secure than loose paper invoices scattered throughout an office. These digital transmissions are protected by File Transfer Protocol and HyperText Transfer Protocol. Paper-based invoices can be lost, stolen, or accidentally discarded. EDI invoicing stores these documents electronically.
6) Formatting
Fintech allows you to automatically assign your organization’s standardized GL coding to all invoice data transmissions. This simplifies bookkeeping with standardized naming conventions. Alcohol distributors often have slightly different naming conventions for the same products. With EDI, you can have your invoices speak the same language.
Embrace Innovation With EDI Invoice Integration
There are better processes for handling a large volume of invoice data. EDI helps your business become more efficient and generate more accurate, reliable bookkeeping practices. You can learn more about how Fintech’s EDI can help your invoice management here.
