RPA (Robotic Process Automation)
RPA in Billing
Key Takeaways
- RPA automates billing workflows (invoice creation, delivery, reconciliation) to eliminate manual errors.
- Overnight automated reconciliation accelerates monthend close and improves cashflow visibility.
- RPA shortens collections cycles via automated dunning and prioritised mismatch reporting.
- No-code RK Series empowers accounting to build secure, auditable robots for complex Excel/CSV tasks.
Billing and collections management is the backbone of a company, turning sales into cash and supporting the entire business. However, the process—from creating billing data and issuing invoices to reconciling payments—is heavily manual. Workloads peak at the end of the month, placing immense pressure on staff, where a single mistake can damage customer trust and negatively impact cash flow.
"RPA (Robotic Process Automation)" automates these routine billing and collections tasks, eliminating human error and enabling faster month-end closing and greater overall productivity.
This article outlines the challenges faced by billing departments, explains the benefits of RPA adoption, and presents concrete use cases. Discover how KEYENCE's RPA, the "RK Series," can elevate your company's billing operations.
Challenges in Billing Departments
In a department where accuracy and speed are critical, the following challenges are common:
Complex Invoice Generation Process
Extracting billing data from sales management systems and transferring it to different invoice formats for each customer is a time-consuming manual process.
Handling Various Delivery Methods
Managing and executing different invoice delivery methods for each customer—such as mail, fax, email attachment, or upload to a dedicated web portal—is a significant burden.
Time-Consuming Payment Reconciliation
The "payment reconciliation" process, which involves manually matching payment details downloaded from online banking with the company's billing data, consumes a vast amount of time.
Manual Dunning and Collections
The task of identifying customers with overdue payments and creating and sending individual reminder letters or emails is often delayed.
Risk of Disruption Due to Dependency on Individuals
The billing workflow is often complex, with know-how concentrated in specific individuals. This creates a risk that operations will halt if that person is absent.
Benefits of RPA Implementation
RPA dramatically improves the accuracy and speed of billing operations.
- Elimination of Billing/Reconciliation Errors and Rework: RPA performs tasks like data transfer, calculation, and matching withaccuracy. This eliminates human errors such as incorrect billing amounts or reconciliation mistakes, saving the time and effort of reissuing and correcting.
- Faster Month-End Closing: By having RPA automatically process time-consuming payment reconciliations overnight, the accounts receivable balance is confirmed quickly, contributing significantly to a faster month-end close.
- Shortened Collections Cycle: RPA's ability to execute the entire process from invoicing to dunning quickly and accurately shortens the collections cycle, leading to improved corporate cash flow.
- Shift of Staff to High-Value Work: Freed from routine tasks, staff can focus on more specialized analytical and decision-making work, such as advanced credit management, handling irregular payments, and cash flow planning.
RPA Use Cases in Billing
Here are specific RPA use cases that can eliminate the month-end rush.
| Task | Automation with RPA |
|---|---|
| Automated Invoice Creation and Issuance | RPA exports billing data as a CSV from the sales management system, automatically populates it into customer-specific invoice templates (e.g., Excel), converts it to a password-protected PDF, and sends it via email. |
| Automated Payment Reconciliation | Every morning, RPA logs into the online banking portal, downloads the previous day's payment details, matches them against billing data, and automatically clears payments that have a perfect match on invoice number and amount. |
| Listing of Mismatched Data | During reconciliation, RPA lists any payments that could not be automatically cleared due to mismatched remitter names or partial payments and notifies the person in charge by email, allowing them to focus on investigation. |
| Automated Dunning Process | RPA automatically extracts customers with overdue payments from the accounts receivable ledger and creates and sends reminder letters or emails with wording appropriate for the delinquency period. |
| Automated Creation of AR Aging Reports | Based on billing and payment data, RPA periodically generates an accounts receivable aging report that lists outstanding balances by delinquency period and shares it with relevant stakeholders. |
Why Choose KEYENCE's RK Series RPA?
Because it deals with money and absolutely cannot tolerate mistakes, the billing department is where KEYENCE's "RK Series" truly shines.
1. Easily Automates Complex Excel and CSV Processing
Excel and CSV files are used extensively in billing. The RK Series makes it easy to automate complex data manipulation tasks—such as data extraction, matching with VLOOKUP, and creating pivot tables—using a rich set of dedicated commands.
2. Empowers Accounting Staff to Lead
No programming knowledge is required. The accounting staff who best understand the workflow can directly translate their daily tasks into robots, achieving practical and highly effective automation.
3. Security and Logging Features for Audits
Strengthen internal controls with user-specific permissions and a logging function that records all operations. It provides a clear audit trail of who did what and when, ensuring a smooth response to audits.
For detailed materials or a consultation on streamlining your billing operations, please feel free to contact us.
