Depending on the financial controls and size of an E&P company, there might be one approver or multiple approvers involved in AP invoicing, a process that is still heavily dependent on interoffice document shuffling.  And expenses may need to be approved by a manager if a certain limit is exceeded or even require controller sign-off.

The critical visibility organization’s need into their budget vs. actual expenses hinges on final invoice validation and approval.  Yet all too often it’s an implicit workflow that can add days or even weeks to an already sluggish process.  AP invoice approvals are fraught with inter-office delays and inefficiencies that can leave important questions unanswered, such as:

  • At any given moment, what invoices are pending approval and who are they waiting on?
  • What happens if an approver gets sick, goes on vacation, or leaves the organization?
  • If an invoice is rejected, what is the process for vendor remediation and rerouting?
  • What is the audit trail? Who signed-off and when did the approval really occur?

An explicit workflow is a computer-assisted method of managing a business process, such as AP approval.  Using such workflows, an operator’s accounts payable process can be transformed from manual, paper-based processes, to a completely automated digital workflow.

The Origo AP automation system provides E&P companies with the benefits of invoice digitization and rapid coding as well as a flexible workflow engine that enables AP processes to be defined and enforced.  As a result, Origo accelerates invoice capture and approval cycle times, delivering a clear and current view of the AP expense pipeline.

Once coded, Origo digitally routes an invoice within seconds and alerts each approver at the appropriate point in the workflow.  The flexible workflow engine enables simple or complex AP business processes to be rapidly created or modified by an administrator.  And at a glance, Origo brings all of your AP data together in a single dashboard that provides up-to-date budget vs. actual expense reporting, AP key performance indicators and invoice status.  The system also enables approvers to be reassigned as needed and records approval history for auditing purposes.