In our series of posts on telecom management pain points, this one is a biggie. Most telecom managers get tired of dealing with invoice processing and payment. Invoices should really be audited every time, but even without that, there is still the matter of getting the invoices – either electronically or paper – GL coding everything, getting it approved, and then paid on time. Anything to keep Accounting is happy.
There are a couple solutions to this headache.
- Go Green. Ditch the paper, and get as many invoices as you can electronically.
- Pay to the line level. This isn’t intuitive, but it is really useful. If you get a lot of accounts all on one invoice, pay each one separately. Then, if you ever need credits or to make changes, you can actually tell what was paid, when, by whom, for what, and how the credits were applied.
- Keep good records. Once you get those invoices, electronic or otherwise, be sure you archive them in a way that is easy to locate and search.
- Use technology. A telecom expense management software tool designed to do this is a huge help for this task.
- Outsource. If you just don’t have the capacity or the desire to deal with it in-house, a partner can help you by accepting, GL coding and paying all your telecom invoices. And if you are using a telecom expense management software for other management tasks, all that invoice data will be populated in the system, making it easier to do auditing and run reports.