The Environmental Benefits of AR Automation

Accounts Receivable (AR) automation offers many business benefits, including:

• Improving cash flow by helping businesses get paid faster
• Increasing AR teams’ productivity by automating repetitive tasks and reducing time spent on collections
• Better forecasting based on more predictable collections and unified reporting
• And helping a company reduce its environmental impact

Research shows that both employees and buyers are interested in working with sustainability-minded companies. Implementing AR automation is a step in the right direction. Let’s look at a few ways that automated AR can help improve sustainability and reduce a company’s carbon footprint.

Automated AR Reduces Paper Waste

The paper waste generated by offices is significant, with one estimation claiming the average office worker uses 10,000 sheets of paper annually. As companies grow and build a bigger book of business, the paper needs for manual invoicing increase proportionally. While many businesses have tried to go paperless, it has been reported that more than 70% of companies are still using paper invoices and some companies are still faxing them.

Automated AR platforms that rely on emailing electronic invoices reduce the need for paper invoices almost to zero, significantly cutting down on the amount of paper a business uses. In addition to eliminating the need for paper invoices, AR automation software with integrated digital payments also cuts down on the number of paper checks that have to be mailed back and forth, reducing paper waste even further. This provides added benefits: your customers can pay you electronically in their preferred method and you receive the funds faster.

AR Automation Cuts Down on Office Supplies & Energy Consumption

Paper is not the only wasteful element of manual invoicing processes. While they may seem like drops in the bucket, the energy and materials needed to produce envelopes, stamps, printer ink, and address labels adds up. Even the energy needed to mail an envelope from your business to your client’s location can be significant when multiplied by the number of invoices you send each month, not to mention those customers who need to receive multiple invoices prior to payment.

With AR automation, everything can be handled electronically through email and online customer portals. That means invoices don’t need to be printed, mailed or faxed. When it comes to AR, an endless stream of printer cartridges that are a hassle to recycle are no longer needed. Neither are rubber bands for bundling deposits together or pages of address labels.

AR Automation Can Help Reduce Your Company’s Carbon Footprint

Possibly the biggest environmental impact AR automation has is allowing AR teams to work remotely. While studies have shown mixed results about whether overall energy consumption is down since remote work has become more prevalent, it has been proven that companies decrease their energy consumption and carbon footprint when employees work from home. Using AR automation software instead of manual processes provides more flexibility and allows interested businesses to take advantage of work-from-home arrangements

Remote companies use less energy and create less waste. Since their employees work from home, they reduce fossil fuel consumption and air pollution by eliminating commutes to the office. Also, the energy used to power, heat, and cool office buildings is significant. Businesses with remote workforces avoid those energy requirements (and the costs associated with them).

Learn More About the Benefits of AR Automation for Your Business

Automating AR and reducing the amount of paper, office supplies, and overall energy used to power manual invoicing can help your company reduce its carbon footprint and be greener in addition to supporting other positive business outcomes.

If you’re interested in AR automation and want to learn how it could benefit your business, talk to one of our payments experts.

Related Resources:

• Save the Planet — Automate Your Accounts Receivable [Infographic]
• 5 B2B Invoicing Missteps and How Invoice Automation Can Help
• 4 Benefits of Upgrading Your Quote-to-Cash to Proposal-to-Payment