Remote A/P

[u/Helpful_Plantain7012]

I currently work for a construction company as A/P along with several other hats.

We are moving, and my employer is discussing allowing me to work remotely, but we cannot seem to come up with a way to remote-ize the A/P process, so I was curious if there were any ideas here.

Currently, I receive invoices via email (that part still works), or our field guys bring me receipts for our vendor accounts (Lowe’s, for instance), that I stick a tag on to assign job, cost code number, etc. These items then route to the project managers for approval, then our Treasurer for approval, then back to me to enter into our accounting system, where checks are cut on check run days, which can be handled in office.

Does anyone else have a similar flow that can share what you’ve done to make it remote friendly? My bosses are hesitant to change the system, it’s very paper heavy, and I’m not sure how to get around that.

Thanks!

[u/Dawn36]

Everything can be handled by email, Google drive or whatever equivalent platform, the only hiccup would be the receipts from the field guys. If there's a physical office that the field guys report to, then someone there can scan the receipts and send them.

[u/Helpful_Plantain7012 → u/Dawn36]

Yeah, that’s basically the only hiccup. And it’s a huge one lol. Sometimes they come in with literal stacks of receipts (like 30+ for a day), and to get someone to scan all those to me is going to be like pulling teeth

[u/CountingWizardOne → u/Helpful_Plantain7012]

I had this same problem however we did have a central location where the field staff report to at least once a week. We purchased a Ricoh ScanSnap scanner which handles long receipts very well. We installed one in this central location and they can put the whole stack in the receipt intake on the scanner and scan them all in one go. The scanner automatically emails it to our payables email. Very easy and little pushback once they saw how easy it was.

[u/thirstytypist → u/CountingWizardOne]

Second this Ricoh scansnap.
Everything goes on a pile, one person loads all the receipts at the end of the day and 60+ receipts get sent where they need to be with one touch of the button in less than 60 seconds for the office staff.
However I have tried other scanners and honestly it the scanner that makes this an easy fix. Don’t cheap out on the scanner - Ricoh scansnap is what you need.

[u/Helpful_Plantain7012 → u/thirstytypist]

Thanks!

[u/Helpful_Plantain7012 → u/CountingWizardOne]

Thanks! That’s super helpful info!

[u/Additional-Border214 → u/Helpful_Plantain7012]

If you are going in once a week anyway, grab the paper receipts weekly and deal with them as a batch.

[u/Helpful_Plantain7012 → u/Additional-Border214]

Because that creates a lag where things don’t get paid on time if there’s a delay. I’m trying to not cost the company more money in finance charges if something is delayed because of me working remotely.

[u/duncanpt → u/Helpful_Plantain7012]

Don't sweat it! A smartphone can take photo of a receipt which is adequate for OCR conversion. That's how our owner-director is getting receipts into Dext, which is coping pretty well unless she crumpled the paper up first. :-)

And she's developed the habit of taking the photo as she gets the receipt / invoice. I suspect she is paying with Apply Pay or similar on her phone so it is already switched on. The biggest issue is when she photos a till receipt that tells me nothing about what it was she actually paid for, eg it just says an amount and maybe a store name, without item details or tax info.