How an A-List Invoice Management Solution Can Transform a Cinemas Accounts Payable Department

How an A-List Invoice Management Solution Can Transform a Cinemas Accounts Payable Department When thinking about cinemas you think of films and popcorn, but behind the scenes there exists a many more that goes on to help keep cinemas in business; which includes the operation of key departments such as Accounts Payable (AP).

Cinemas have thousands of invoices to process each year, which can include film, concession and general invoices; each of these have a particular process they must go through before being paid.

If done manually these processes can be very time consuming and costly, but investing in an automated solution can help to significantly reduce processing times and costs.

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An Invoice Management Solution (IMS) can process any type of invoice including the ones that cinemas would generally need to process.

Film Invoices Film distributors often send consolidated invoices to cinemas containing details of many films. Once scanned, IMS reads the invoice data using OCR (optical character recognition), and feeds the info to a finance system. IMS treats each film as a separate entity, as every film for each cinema has its own purchase order that the invoice needs to be matched to.

Once matched to its purchase order, IMS validates the invoice data to minimise manual user intervention and to increase accuracy. IMS obtains certain pieces of information from the cinemas booking system in order for the invoice to be validated:  Cinema codes - these may be stated on the invoice or taken from the cinema name  Film name - integration with the cinema booking system enables the correct film name to be acquired from the number of abbreviations  Play week - this needs to be validated to ensure it starts from the beginning of the cinema week  Confirmation that the invoice has been matched and validated is then entered into the finance system and the invoice can automatically be paid without intervention by the AP team.

Concession Invoices Concession invoices are dealt with in much the same way as film invoices. The invoices are scanned and the data is read using OCR. IMS posts this data to the finance system where the invoice is matched to its purchase order.

As with film invoices, if the finance system cannot match the invoice, an associate of the AP team will be alerted so they can resolve it manually. The cinema will receive an email notification, and via a hypertext link, launch a web browser interface to view the invoice and the query, and can respond accordingly. Once matched, the invoice can be paid.

Automating the supplier invoice process provides far reaching benefits not only for AP, but to their suppliers and all the other departments who liaise with the AP. Some of the key benefits of an invoice management system include:        

Reduced invoice processing costs Increase in control over key business processes Improved visibility of invoices throughout the business Improved communication between AP and other cinema departments Easy and instant retrieval of information and documents The ability to share information with internal and external bodies Removal of internal storage Access to detailed management information

These benefits will help AP to process invoices efficiently and effectively, whilst also drastically reducing the amount of time usually associated with manually processing invoices.

An Invoice Management Solution will transform the AP department right into a more efficient and productive place, as AP staff could have more time in order to concentrate on more strategic tasks.