4 Value-Adds of Future-Proofing Your Business with EDI

The flow of invoice data between your vendors and your back-office system should be seamless. The outdated process of manually entering invoice data can lead to issues with duplicate or missing invoices, incorrect data entry, and slow reconciliation of any cost discrepancies—potentially affecting your margins.

One way to overcome these challenges is by automating invoice data capture through an electronic data interchange (EDI) integration. Fintech’s PaymentSource® has done this with alcohol invoices for years, and now its PaymentSource Premium level integrates with PDI to capture non-alcohol invoice data for all your other goods, services, and supplies.

While the time savings for managers with automated invoice data entry are an immediate benefit, you might gain other value-added benefits when utilizing an integration. Let’s explore these additional benefits that can help move the needle toward implementation.

1. Extend time savings to other departments

Manual invoice processing involves multiple operational teams. By automating the flow of invoice data between vendors and businesses, these teams regain valuable time that can be used for other tasks. Store managers see this firsthand by spending less time entering invoice information into a back-office system. But that’s not where the time savings stop.

Fintech’s clients report five-minute time savings per invoice across their auditing, pricebook, and accounts payable staff. By reducing errors with missing invoices, manual errors, and the need for force balancing, these teams can focus on other strategic initiatives.

2. Scale successfully while keeping labor costs stable

Adding new locations typically means hiring more staff to handle the increased invoice volume, but that ripple effect doesn’t have to carry over into back-office personnel with an integration. Using an EDI integration empowers back-office teams to handle expansion without adding headaches. Instead of leaving your team overwhelmed at the prospect of manually processing more invoices, EDI invoicing makes the workload manageable and keeps teams lean. When it comes to future-proofing the business for frontline growth, an invoice data integration sets a strong foundation for acquisitions and expansion.

3. Enhance data visibility across department functions

EDI integration supports automated invoice data ingestion, standardization, and coding to your preferred GL codes to create data consistency with your vendors and across your departments. This clean data enables more accurate reporting, allowing for the detection of pricing inconsistencies and volume trends. C-stores can forecast spending and plan inventory more effectively with quicker access to accurate invoice information. You also have the convenience of researching invoice data in PDI or your Fintech portal.

4. Simplify onboarding of new vendors as business expands—even smaller ones

Adding new vendors is simple when using invoice data integration. For example, Fintech already has a large vendor ecosystem that processes invoices electronically. If a vendor is already using Fintech to submit invoices to customers electronically, it is an easy lift to have them do the same for you and facilitate data transmission from that vendor to PDI’s back-office system through Fintech. This setup is managed by Fintech’s dedicated integrations team.

In some cases, vendors may not have the means to work with EDI. Fintech offers a proprietary Invoice Builder for less tech-savvy vendors that allows them to create digital versions of invoices for data ingestion inside the Fintech portal. From there, Fintech ingests, standardizes, and codes the data before sending it back to your PDI back-office system through your established EDI integration process.

This helps you maintain strong relationships with smaller vendors while still achieving the goal of digitizing your invoice processing. There is no need to worry about adding new vendors as you grow your business when leveraging an EDI integration.

Empower your teams by implementing an EDI integration

With these EDI benefits, digitizing your invoice data processing is an easy choice. The trickle-down effect across teams helps improve operational efficiency, and having faster access to invoice data shapes decision-making, speeds up reconciliation, and provides visibility into trends.

You can learn more about Fintech’s PaymentSource Premium here.