Many companies that are considering switching to digital processing of their incoming invoices ask us the same question; When is the best time to start? In practice, we have noticed there will always be a reason not to start scanning purchase invoices immediately. Too often we have heard the excuses such as;- ‘We have another project that has more priority’ or ‘I want to start on January 1st’ or ‘We still do not receive enough invoices digitally by e-mail’ etc.
Certainly the latter is a case of “what came first the chicken or the egg” story. If you do not start with a solution for the digital processing of invoices, you will undoubtedly also not encourage your suppliers to deliver invoices digitally. The starting moment for the introduction of Blue10 within a company or organization is sometimes really difficult. Of course there is often something to be said for this. Apart from the regular activities during the year, the first four months of the year are dominated by the year end, which still has to done at many companies. Nevertheless, January 1 is often sacred within organizations for the start of new projects, especially for the digitization of incoming invoices. But is this really handy?
The new financial year is the ideal starting moment
It seems ideal to switch to the digital processing of purchase invoices on 1 January. This way you have a clear separation from which period your invoices are digitally available and which invoices are still in the physical archive. But is this as ideal as it seems? In almost every financial department, January is a busy month. In this month, in addition to the regular activities, the last invoices of the previous year are booked and the preparations for the year-end are taken. In the last two weeks of December, employee attendance within many organizations is also very thin and that is not always useful.
In practice, we see the customers who start on January 1st find it a little difficult to get started, which is a waste. The start-up of Blue10 takes place very quickly, but it needs, as every change in the organization, the necessary attention. If you really want to start on January 1st, make sure that in November / December you already process a full month of invoices digitally, so that you can do it easier in January of the new year and immediately save time. Time that you can better use for carrying out the other work.
How much time does it take us to start?
When considering a switch to the digitization of the incoming invoices, the expected implementation and turnaround time is an important issue. Within many organizations, the expectation is that at least a few days of training are required for both key users and end users. Strangely enough, this expectation is not only present in large organizations, but also in smaller SME companies where the number of invoices is lower.
The duration of an implementation depends mainly on the size of the organization and the choice between the locally installed variant or the online variant of Blue10. Within smaller organizations, where invoices cover few disks, Blue10 is generally fully adopted within the organization within one to two weeks and people no longer want to go back. Within larger organizations, we notice an important difference between the concepts of implementation and turnaround time. Even though Blue10 is implemented within a few days, the total turnaround time can be a lot longer for various reasons. This could include, for example, the further alignment of purchase order matching and the roll-out of Blue10 over various branches.
If you want to use the online version of Blue10, the explanation takes about one hour, with the help of a number of scanned invoices, which will be used to set up your system immediately. We do not believe in ‘something happening’, after which you can repeat this yourself. We are convinced that you can best organize and learn a system like Blue10 by working with it in practice. During the use of Blue10, it may well happen that questions arise. If you want, you can solve almost any question independently using the blogs and videos on our website. Naturally, our service desk is also ready to answer your questions.
During the implementation, the person who books the invoices will receive an explanation, because for this person the working method will change the most. For the approvers, it turns out in practice that they can easily start working with Blue10 without any explanation. The only difference for them is that they no longer receive folders with invoices, but receive an e-mail notification to check an invoice digitally
What is the ideal starting moment?
The moment you start, you always decide yourself. A completely digital financial year is of course a nice aim, but certainly not an obligation. A financial year is and remains primarily an administrative ‘obligation’ and not a practical, hard dividing line. Every user who has switched from the traditional processing of invoices to digital invoice processing comes across at least once, a situation where they are looking for an invoice that predates the digitalization process. This type of a scenario immediately provides an answer to the above question. No, there is no ideal moment to start or actually better; yes, every moment is ideal to start. The moment someone searches for an invoice that dates back to just before the start of digitization, will come anyway. Whether you start in January, in April or July. Everybody inevitably thinks;- “ If I had just started digitizing earlier, I would have found that invoice already” ….
