In a recent poll conducted by the leading enterprise benchmarking firm The Hackett Group, 62% of the finance leaders mentioned cash application automation as their topmost priority. As global businesses continue to reel under uncertainty, gaining control on cash is becoming more critical than ever.
Cash posting is often expensive, time consuming and error prone. In a typical B2B scenario companies make thousands of transactions. The complexity of matching invoices to payments and remittances that come in many channels, in various data formats, in multiple document formats, across multiple countries and regions in many languages and currencies creates difficulty and inefficiency in cash application.
Problems with the Conventional Process
For years, accounts receivable (AR) professionals were caught up in the outdated paper-based processes that involved manually matching payments and remittance information. The heavy dependence on these tedious processes often had serious consequences on businesses since a “fully paid” customer may continue to receive late notice reminders, while another customer is marked “paid” while no funds have been received from them.
To overcome these burdensome issues in the conventional accounts receivable (AR) processes, enterprises across the world are realizing the importance of modernizing the archaic cash application to attain touchless, frictionless cash posting. As major advancements in digital technologies for receiving and applying customer payments gain traction, new hyper-efficient digital cash application solutions are delivering huge improvements in terms of cost, speed, and accuracy of applying cash.
The AI Advantage in Cash Application
A critical advancement in technology for cash application is the utilization of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Leveraging the cognitive data capturing methodologies, AI can automatically extract remittance data from multiple sources in many different formats, handle data entry and auto-apply the payments to open invoices. This is a giant leap in the evolution of cash application.
Enterprise AI-powered Digital Assistants can extract remittance data from multiple customer sources/documents in multiple formats, and seamlessly integrate with bank lockboxes and various ERP systems. Machine Learning/Natural Language processing enables the robots to “learn” where to find the required data on each individual customer’s remittance format which progressively increases accuracy. Remittance data is automatically applied to open cash invoices by the auto-match engine with a hit rate of 90% and above. What’s more, AI-powered digital assistants automatically create deductions to be routed for resolution. They also engage with customers to enable them to make prompt payments via ACH, Wire or Card.
Using AI in cash application, businesses can
- Eliminate manual lockbox remittance, payments data entry and document handling
- Automate matching and posting straight through invoice-to-receipts
- Automate deductions processing and resolve them through workflow
- Access self-service digital portals with voice and chat bots
- Reduce bank fees and the associated manual activities
- Improve customer satisfaction and build customer loyalty
- Demonstrate success with reliable cash flow, which can be used as working capital
Enterprises across industries can phenomenally improve cost efficiency, timeliness and accuracy of the cash application function using artificial intelligence (AI).
Accelerate Cash Application with Emagia
Modernize your AR operations for touchless and frictionless cash posting using Emagia AI-powered Cash Application. The module includes data gathering of all payments and remittance information from banks, lockboxes, EDI, checks, emails, and customer vendor portals using software robots, as well as data matching using a sophisticated ML-based auto-matching engine. This cloud-based solution easily integrates with leading ERP systems such as SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, NetSuite and others.
For over a decade, Emagia has delivered order-to-cash automation platforms for global finance, F&A shared services, and BPO organizations. Whether the challenge is automating the AR process, minimizing manual errors and costs, reducing the time between paying and posting, or automating the cash application without using a single piece of paper, Emagia can help you achieve exponential gains in the Cash Application using AI.
Customer Success: Achieving World-class Cash Application Performance
Learn how a global medical supplies company is using Emagia AI-powered Cash Application in their global AR operations to achieve 90% and above auto-cash posting.
