Companies might have hundreds, if not thousands of
employees, with an exponentially higher number of
invoices processed annually. Across departments and
locations, it can be difficult, if not impossible to track that
money is getting spent as it should. And this can lead to
duplicate invoices getting paid, unnecessary late fees, and
other undesirable outcomes throughout the
procurement-to-pay (P2P) process.
Furthermore, one of the most significant issues facing
Controllers and AP teams is the rise of “Shadow Spend,”
where employees bypass corporate procurement policies
to obtain proper approvals and authorization for spend
by placing purchases on a corporate credit card. AP teams
lack visibility into these credit card purchases until the
monthly statements arrive, consequently disrupting the
entire procure-to-pay process and controls that were put
in place by AP to ensure proper oversight. To rectify this
disruption, AP is forced into a manual and time-consuming
process to determine who made the purchase and what
it was for, verifying approvals, hunt down the proper
documentation, and manually enter in their financial
system to close the books.
