Basware has announced a new e-invoicing solution for small and medium sized businesses, InvoiceReady, that is delivered as a service rather than requiring on-premise scanning hardware and software.

InvoiceReady automates the accounts payable processes from receipt of invoice, through approvals until payment.

Basware has invested its invoice automation expertise into one workflow solution, providing small and medium sized companies the tools to implement best practice processes within their finance departments. The service provides fully auditable paperless trails, both before and after payment, giving detailed visibility of spend commitments as well as ensuring compliance with local and international finance regulations.

Research among global accounts payable staff earlier this year found invoice scanning and data entry considered to be the most time consuming and error prone elements of invoice processing, and 60 percent of finance professionals think automation is a reliable method for removing payment and accounting errors from the business.

Basware InvoiceReady provides invoice scanning services, data migration, real-time workflow tracking, travel and expense management and a fully auditable archiving service, all available on a per transaction price.

“Small and medium-sized companies are struggling with manual, paper-driven processes and are realising that automation can alleviate most of the challenges they face in their day-to-day operations. Our research indicates that over 60% of these companies feel their accounts payable function has inefficiencies caused by paper invoices. Even worse 55% are making late payments and missing discounts because of decentralised processing and a lack of automation. The opportunity for any business with paper invoices is enormous,” commented Henry Ijams, Managing Director, PayStream Advisors.

“There is strong understanding within finance departments of the link between automation, accuracy and efficiency,” commented Karri Lehtonen, Vice President at Basware, Australia and New Zealand.

“For years our technology and thorough knowledge of invoice automation best practice has helped some of the world’s largest organisations to achieve these benefits, along with the logical time and cost savings. With InvoiceReady we are now extending that same capability to small and medium sized businesses as a pre-packaged, easy-to-use, on-demand service to help them transition invoice processing from a burden to a value, by improving visibility into their organisation’s cash flow.”