Building an efficient and effective email strategy for your business invoicing is easier said than done.
For businesses juggling thousands of accounts payable and accounts receivable invoices yearly, it’s no surprise that much financial correspondence gets buried under the weight of promotional emails, team messages and customer communications.
Businesses conducting all operations from just one email address run the risk of missing AP invoices, making incorrect payments and losing correspondence with important vendors.
This is where a dedicated email strategy comes into play. Opening a dedicated email account to manage company invoices could revolutionise your business management.
With this in mind, we’ve compiled a list of five reasons why you should build a dedicated email strategy to manage company invoices in 2024.
If you’re a business managing a long list of suppliers, overseeing a constant stream of invoices entering your inbox can be difficult.
For example, if you’re outsourcing goods production or purchasing third-party services, suppliers will likely send an accounts payable (AP) invoice once they have completed their work.
If all of these invoices end up in the same inbox as other corporate communications, one will soon slip through the cracks, and you’ll be charged a late payment fee.
While creating a dedicated hub for invoices is not a new phenomenon, businesses have moved away from classic PO Boxes and onto a dedicated email address, streamlining an invoice’s journey straight to the accounting department.
A whopping 91% of companies report at least one successful inbox phishing attack every year.
Cybercriminals routinely target business email accounts with AP-style phishing expeditions disguised as traditional accounts payable invoices.
Not only must all staff members be trained to spot threatening emails, but businesses that publish a one-for-all email address on their websites should be aware of the risk associated with suspicious attachments and unfamiliar domain names.
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A business that creates a dedicated email strategy for managing company invoices halts its risk. This is simply because the account email address is only given to suppliers and accounting staff trained to identify potential cyber-security breaches.
By restricting the amount of emails appearing in the inbox, you reduce the risk of discovering any dangerous domains pretending to be a supplier or service.
Maintaining strong relationships with your suppliers drives positive email communication. This is especially true when dealing with AP and AR invoices.
Dedicating an email strategy to your accounts makes it easy to find each supplier email thread and keep track of all communications, past and present.
This is particularly important if either side is inaccurate. If you have an easily accessible recorded email thread, you can pinpoint your payments and ensure that a service provider is charging you correctly.
Likewise, if you’ve made a mistake, an accounts team can easily access and maintain focused communications for a single dedicated email account; this guarantees that the issue is dealt with immediately and is not missed in a busy one-for-all inbox.
If you’re yet to ditch paper invoices, building a dedicated email account for your accounts team could help you take the step.
Companies that automate their accounts payable processes instantly reduce risks of human error, postal losses and paper waste.
There are a number of benefits associated with going paperless and choosing to send and receive invoices via email.
(Image Source: Invoicera)
Email-driven invoicing allows for improved payment flexibility. Paper invoices often give the payee less choice when it comes to completing the payment process. An email invoice could contain a link to a seamless electronic payment method that accepts multiple forms of payment, such as Apple Pay and credit.
Better still, if you learn how to send invoices via email, you can expect the payment on the same day. Posting paper invoices, however, must allow for time in transit and any receiver delays.
Without a dedicated email address for your invoicing operations, you run the risk of making duplicate payments.
For example, if a supplier sends an invoice to multiple people in the company on separate email addresses, it’s likely to be paid more than once.
With a dedicated email address for all invoices, AP payments can be flagged and stored once dealt with to avoid any challenges associated with making duplicate payments.
Every business’s AP strategy looks a little different; however, some factors must remain the same to ensure that email invoicing runs smoothly.
Here are some of the most important factors to add to your own dedicated email strategy:
The first step in creating a successful dedicated email strategy is to create and share a dedicated email address.
The key here is for the domain to remain the same so that suppliers associate the email with your company but change the address to a term associated with invoicing.
This could be accountspayable@yourdomain.com or simply just accounts@yourdomain.com; the choice is up to you!
Ensure that your dedicated email address is routed to the team responsible for dealing with accounts payable and accounts receivable invoicing.
If you have multiple people on your team, you should be able to add numerous mail contacts to one new domain.
To do this, open a shared mailbox, authorise forwarding and create a transport rule to notify users of new addresses.
Accurate invoice management helps businesses maintain strong vendor relationships and stay on top of their outgoings.
Introducing a dedicated email strategy for your invoicing needs streamlines the process and solidifies security for both your company and your suppliers.
Segmenting your company emails into numerous inboxes is a game-changer for growing businesses and an essential tool to leverage in a busy corporate landscape. It allows you to tap into account communications with just a few clicks and reduce phishing risks from unknown domains.
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