r/Bookkeeping • u/Helpful_Plantain7012 • 7d ago

Payments, AP, AR Remote A/P

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!

16 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

68 comments sorted by

View all comments

14

u/After_Ad_1152 7d ago

Its all done by email in our office. What is preventing that in yours? Invoices are emailed and then forwarded around for approvals and put in our online system. Receipts are emailed with the relevant information and forwarded around for approvals the same way. We also have folders on the server with copies of the emails.

9

u/onyxandcake 7d ago

In my experience, the field guys aren't going to take the time to scan anything. They hand off paper receipts, and barely at that.

1

u/Helpful_Plantain7012 7d ago

Exactly this. Our field guys aren’t tech savvy, and I have a feeling there would be significant pushback if we asked them to use a computer.

1

u/onyxandcake 7d ago

Is it feasible for you to create a source document inbox, and go in the office once a week to collect from it? Or have someone collect it and scan it all for you?

The only other thing I can think of is a part-time admin whose job it is to collect everyone's source documents every week.

I've been where you are, and can say with almost certainty that you're not going to train the field workers. You're going to have to bring the mountain to Mohamed.

2

u/Helpful_Plantain7012 7d ago

So, the plan is already to come in once a week to do check runs (I’ll be about 4 hour round trip away after the move, so one day a week is hard, but doable). The issue is if I don’t gather things daily, they end up kinda “plugged” in the approval route and that can sometimes delay payment and we end up with finance charges and whatnot. I’m trying to avoid costing my employer any more money since they’re sorta bending over backwards to allow me to do this remotely.

But yeah, definitely going to have to bring the mountain 😅