State Award for AP automation solution

June 25, 2009:A South Australian iAward for innovation in financial services has been awarded to Scan Conversion Services, for CAAPS, its Complete, Automated Accounts Payable Solution.

The Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) recognised the solution designed to automate invoice and remittance processing so that AP staff deal only with exceptions.

CAAPS is a business rules engine and methodology that dramatically improves management of expenditure and cashflow.

SCS Managing Director Richard Bates explains that the CAAPS methodology gathers the information to configure the business rules engine; automatically takes the information from invoices and remittances; compares the data simultaneously with multiple external sources, such as supplier list, debtors list, ABN list, bank statements and so on; and routes the information for action by the relevant staff member.

Invalid invoices may be routed to accounts staff while invoices requiring approval go directly to the approver; non-GST-compliant invoices may be returned to the supplier

“The business rules engine is unique as it does not require programming by the customer and its rules can be readily adjusted for continual process improvement,” Mr Bates explained.

One major South Australian Government Department started with only a few rules and has grown to over 100 rules applied to every invoice. Using CAAPS, construction company Baulderstone recorded an improvement of 32%, while the SA Department of Treasury and Finance recorded a saving of 0.5 FTE across 12 branches, with an opportunity to reduce AP staff numbers by 50%.

“The software is easy to use with highly complex logic gathered by SCS from working with a large number of accounts departments which all operate differently," Mr Bates said.

SCS now sees opportunities to use the rules engines in other markets that require complex interrelated logic. Last year SCS saw a 380% growth in repeat clients using the service. The company’s initial market focus is Australia and New Zealand.