New in VendorPay: How Advanced Approvals Provide Better Control and Security for Your Payments Process
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In the ever-evolving world of end-to-end accounts payable (AP) automation, the need for advanced approvals processes is becoming more and more important — especially when it comes to payments.
While automated workflows route invoices through custom approval processes, organizations — like Ottimate — understand the importance of payments also getting their own advanced approvals flows.
Advanced payment approvals contribute to better control, security, and overall accountability within the AP process. To ensure our customers are offered the best experience possible, Ottimate is thrilled to introduce advanced payment approvals within our VendorPay payment automation solution.
3 Benefits of Advanced Payment Approvals
1. Clear Separation between Invoice and Payment Approvals
Choosing the right people to assign as approvers is a key part of any approvals process.
Invoice approvals are in place to ensure accuracy and compliance. That’s why it’s important to choose approvers who have the ability to verify that all details on an invoice are correct, and who can ensure that each invoice complies with company policies, regulatory requirements, and contractual agreements.
Payment approvals exist to ensure invoices are able to be paid. For payment processes, it’s best to appoint approvers with a deep understanding of company finances, so that they’re able to verify sufficient funds are available before scheduling payments.
Because invoice and payment approvals each serve a unique purpose within the accounts payable workflow, the people approving invoices should be different from these approving payments. This ensures better accountability and reduces the risk of errors and fraud.
Ottimate lets you easily set up custom approval flows that match your business’s needs, so the right payment requests automatically route to the right people. With Ottimate, invoice processing and payment automation are two distinct features within the overall end-to-end AP process — making it easy to avoid overlap and avoid confusion.
2. Strategic Control Over Cash Flow
Creating a payments approval process and choosing the right approver(s) offer you better insight into your financials — as well as greater control over your organization’s cash flow.
When you align your payments strategy with your overarching financial policies and liquidity requirements, your company’s finances become more transparent and precise. This not only helps you take a more strategic approach to financial management, but also ensures that all payments are processed with your organization’s unique financial goals in mind.
Ottimate provides you with real-time, comprehensive insights into your payment history, so it’s easy to track your spending throughout the year.
3. Stronger Security Measures
Financial fraud is a very real threat in today’s society.
That’s why VendorPay gives you the power to set up a separate approval process for payments. Incorporating advanced approval policies acts as an added layer of security, which greatly reduces the risk of fraudulent activity affecting your account.
This extra layer of security not only protects your organization’s financial assets, but also fosters trust between you and your vendors.
Custom Approvals That Meet Your Unique Needs
While VendorPay already offered a simple approval process, there has been a demand for a more sophisticated approach. Ottimate has long-offered a simple approvals process with VendorPay, the need for a more sophisticated approach has become more and more evident. Larger organizations, in particular, have demonstrated a desire to be able to set up a more complex workflow within their payment approvals process.
In order to meet our clients’ diverse needs, we’ve decided to expand upon our simple, one-size-fits-all approach, and offer the ability to advanced payment approvals that can be customized by payment amount, vendor, payment type, and more.
Some of the Advanced Approval Policies now available through Ottimate include:
- Number-of-Person Approval: This requires a specified number of authorized individuals to approve payments, and acts as a stringent control measure against fraud or errors.
- Threshold Approval: This requires additional approval for payment amounts above a certain threshold — typically from upper-level management.
- Vendor-Based Approval: Certain vendors may require additional scrutiny and approval to verify legitimacy, depending on the type of contract you have with them.
- Account-Based Approval: Organizations managing multiple accounts may require approvals for payments related to specific accounts.
Empowering Organizations with Advanced Approval Policies
By offering the option to add advanced approval policies within VendorPay, Ottimate can now meet the unique needs of organizations looking for more control over their financial health. This new feature is a significant step towards empowering our customers with a more tailored, streamlined, and secure vendor payments approval process.
Ready to take your payment approvals policy to the next level? It’s easy to get started with Ottimate’s VendorPay. Take the first step in achieving greater control over your payments process by scheduling a free demo today.
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