Accounts payable (AP) outsourcing companies step in to handle your company’s invoice capture, verification, and payment systems. With reliable accounting staff in critically short supply, a good AP vendor ensures your suppliers and vendors get paid on time, all the while unlocking big potential savings on staffing, equipment, and overheads.
Handing off your key financial processes to an outside partner is a big step, however. Trust, reliability, and value-added services are all as important as cost.
If you’re looking for an experienced AP Processing company to handle your financial process now or heading into 2024, you’re in the right place.
Here are some of the biggest companies currently redefining accounts payable outsourcing services.
Payment Partners: The Top Five AP Vendors
The biggest players in the AP outsourcing industry include payment processing specialists, specialist software suppliers, and end-to-end outsourcing service suppliers. These companies are providing technology, people, and value-added consulting services. Let’s take a look.
ILM Corp.
Virginia-based ILM Corp. is a major provider of industry-leading AP services to commercial clients as well as critical government entities like the Department of Homeland Security, the Internal Revenue Service, and the US Patent and Trade Office. The company also offers services tailored for nonprofits.
With more than 40 years of industry experience, ILM offers a range of AP outsourcing and document services driven by cutting-edge scanning and exception-handling technology. ILM stands apart from other AP outsourcing companies with a demonstrated ability to:
- Cut average invoice processing costs by more than 80%
- Settle payments up to 9x faster than other companies
Numbers like that mean real savings not only by right-timing major expenses and taking advantage of early-payment bonuses, but also in bread-and-butter savings on back-office staffing, equipment, and overtime expenses. Most importantly, it frees up talented, creative staff to focus on improving your core revenue-driving operations.
ILM offers end-to-end AP services including:
- Invoice scanning, sorting, and classification
- Vendor and PO matching
- Data extraction
- General ledger coding
- Paperless check deposits
- Data uploading, archiving, and compliance
These services are delivered through unmatched integration of artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms into ILM’s smart-scanning and exception handling technology. The company also offers out-of-the-box integration with most ERP systems for seamless data transfer as well as process analysis and optimization services.
ILM is defined by a commitment to customer service, with every client enjoying direct access to a dedicated project manager as a single point of contact for all services. The company is fully compliant with Sarbanes-Oxley financial requirements and also offers compliance with all major industry standards, including:
- ISO 9001:2015 certification
- SOC 1 Type 2 audited
- PCI DSS compliant
- HIPPA compliant
- Department of Homeland Security secured facility
You can contact us today to get more information about our exceptional AP Processing services.
Quadiant AP
With more than $31 billion in AP spend processed for blue chip companies including Mcdonald’s, Ticketmaster, and Holiday Inn, Beanworks (now called Quadiant AP) is a leading supplier of AP software with a particular focus on the hospitality industry.
Delivering technological solutions rather than hands-on AP services, Quadiant AP allows companies to build efficiencies and cut costs by automating PO generation, invoice entry, and routing and payment approvals while offering fully searchable records, real time accrual reports, and other visualization tools to improve the transparency of your processes.
The company claims its software can reduce data entry errors by 83% with automatic header and line item capture, reducing the time typically spent by AP staff on entry by at least 50%.
Quadiant offers its solutions through a scalable suite of applications, starting from its free Beansprout cloud-based payment approval portal and extending to its subscription-based PO, invoicing, payment, and expense management applications. The company also offers software training and certification for its products and a range of other value-add resources.
The company’s products can also be integrated with accounting platforms including SAP, Oracle, Netsuite, Microsoft Dynamics, Quickbooks, Sage, and others.
Ardem Inc.
Founded in 2004, Ardem Inc. has grown rapidly into a serious player in the international AP and office automation space, scanning 12-15 million pages a year for clients including major retail, industrial, and financial services companies as well as the U.S Army, U.S. Air Force, Marine Corp., and other federal entities.
With the ability to set up a multinational team within two weeks to handle clients’ needs by pulling from a large pool of trained analysts, Ardem prides itself on its ability to rapidly identify your company’s AP requirements and develop customized processes to meet them.
The company’s proprietary Ardem Invoice Capture & Extraction (AIM) software reportedly offers 99.7% accuracy in scanning and extracting invoices, with invoice pre-approval via a unique 3-4 way matching process. Once approved, Ardem’s purpose-built automation software uses machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies to validate and in most cases automatically correct blank or missing fields.
Ardem analysts are trained to work with a wide range of enterprise-level accounting and payment platforms including SAP, Oracle Netsuite, Microsoft Dynamics, Quickbooks, Bill.com, and Concur—allowing automation to be delivered within a client’s existing system via Ardem’s own cloud-based systems.
Ardem’s services meet major industry compliance standards including:
- ISO 27001
- SOC 2 Type 2 audited
- Sarbanes-Oxley financial standards
GEP
Multinational managed services provider GEP offers AP services to a range of Fortune 500 and Global 2000 companies from several service centers around the world. The company offers a full suite of AP services including:
- Mailroom and document scanning
- Invoice capturing, matching, and exception management
- Payment processing, cost recovery, and invoice auditing
GEP provides end-to-end outsourced services for both procure-to-pay and source-to-pay services, both including comprehensive accounts payable functionality. The company offers staff with expertise in all major payments and ERP systems, including its own cloud-based, mobile-enabled source-to-pay platform.
The company’s services are designed to deliver improved compliance, accuracy, and security together with faster payment cycle times, but it also offers a host of value-added consulting services including
- Spend analysis
- Strategic cost management
- Procurement and supply chain outsourcing
GEP also offers systems and expertise specifically designed to tackle tail-spend, which is the long tail of hard-to-track transactions (accounting for up to 80% of the transaction volume and only 20% of monthly spend) that are a major source of AP inefficiencies for many companies.
Flatworld Solutions
Online services group Flatworld Solutions offers a wide range of AP services including invoice receipt and data capture, PO matching, invoice processing, and routing as well as disbursement, accrual, general ledger, and archiving functions.
The multinational company offers cost-effective pricing for all-size organizations and boasts some of the fastest invoicing turn-around times in the industry through service centers in New Jersey, Bangalore, and the Philippines.
With 18 years of experience offering high-quality AP outsourcing services to clients, Flatworld also provides specialized debit memo and suspect duplicate analysis service. The company’s processes are fully Sarbanes-Oxley compliant and compatible with all major accounting and ERP systems.
Intelligent Accounts Payable Outsourcing
Choosing a vendor to help you take advantage of the benefits and opportunities offered by AP outsourcing is a major decision. It pays to partner with an AP vendor that has an established track record, uses industry-leading technology, and provides stand-out customer services.
ILM Corp is an established AP outsourcing services supplier trusted by major U.S. corporations, the government, and nonprofits. We offer:
- 40 years of experience in AP and document services
- Proven ability to cut invoice processing costs and payment times
- Industry-leading AI-driven scanning and verification technology
- A dedicated team of information and project management professionals.
Click below to learn more about how ILM’s AP outsourcing services can help you focus on what you do best.
