Expenses - Do you use auto-fetch function for invoices' emails?

Most bills in this modern age of technology are no longer mailed to a physical address and are accessible online.

The downside of this is that a business may have tens or hundreds of invoices each month and it would not be worth the time for a team or staff member to either login to the supplier portal to obtain the invoice or sift through layers of emails in a dedicated accounts/invoicing email, to then submit it to the accountant or into the accounting system.

Some systems or accounting add-ons would have an auto-fetch function. What this means is that whenever an invoice is generated, certain suppliers have made it possible for the system or add-on to bring in the invoice from the supplier platform to the system or add-on. This is called fetching of invoice.

As auto-fetch is in place, there should no longer be a requirement for any staff member to manually forward regular or periodic invoices to the accountant or to enter into the accounting system. These systems and add-ons can be organised or set-up in a way to automate the majority of the steps from fetching the invoice to the payment or reconciliation of these invoices in the accounting system.

The level of automation can be customised in a way so a staff member can get involved at a certain step to do a manual check, or alternatively, the invoices can be automated from start to completion without any manual work.