Step 8: Tell your Suppliers what to do
FOR YOUR TEAM
Once your staff have been brought up to speed to the changes re Lightyear, you should now start asking your suppliers to email your bills to your xxxxx@lightyear.cloud account.
No-one particularly likes change, but from the very outset we designed Lightyear to be as easy as possible for suppliers to get involved in. At the time of writing this 97% of all bills coming into Lightyear were system generated PDFs. It is only by exception that a supplier may not be able to provide you with a system generated PDF, but with more and more suppliers moving off older MS-DOS based systems and onto cloud-based systems, that number is diminishing rapidly. If they say "we can't" they most likely will mean "that just sounds too hard". When pressed on the matter, most suppliers will find a way.
It may also be useful to send the supplier the PDF help document that is attached at the bottom of this article.
Also, as mentioned in the previous article, please get all of your staff (or your client's staff) to be across these changes, and supportive of them. It is office/location/dept managers that have the direct relationships with Suppliers, and they will be able to assist you.
Note - If you are an external Accountant or Bookkeeper, we would advise that the communications to your client's suppliers comes from the client and their staff.
FOR SUPPLIERS
As a supplier, we know that your main business function is to provide your customers with product and service. Second to that you want to get paid as quickly as possible, and not be burdened with the Accounts Receivable process...forever being asked to send copy bills etc.
We have designed Lightyear to be as easy as possible for you. Simply emailing a client your standard bill as a PDF means
- the client never loses a bill again
- your bill is in front of the relevant person within the client's team for approval in real-time, speeding up the payment process
- the client has an audit trail showing them when you sent the bill.
- you cut down on print, paper, and postage costs
Lightyear allows you to provide your bills to your clients as an e-invoice for no cost or disruption. Thanks for getting on board.
TEMPLATE LETTER FOR SUPPLIERS
Copy and paste the written content below and customize to your liking or download the .doc file attach for ease of mail merging.
Don't forget to insert your Lightyear email address into this letter
IMPORTANT – PLEASE READ
CHANGES TO OUR BILL PAYMENT PROCESSING
Dear Supplier,
As part of our effort to improve the way we do business with you, and to reduce both your costs and ours, we have made some system changes that require your immediate attention and cooperation.
These changes are designed to provide greater visibility, accessibility and efficiencies in the way we process your bills.
These changes are effective immediately. Your cooperation is essential to ensure your bills are processed promptly to avoid late or missed payment.
We have recently implemented an accounts payable processor called Lightyear. All you need to do is email us your bill. Lightyear will allow for all bills to be made available to our team online. Key benefits of Lightyear include
- Faster approvals process, leading to earlier settlement of debts
- No more paper and all associated costs – printing, postage, and environment
- No more lost bills
- No data entry errors into our inventory and accounting systems at our end
From today please email your bills in system generated PDF format to:
While you're here, please note you may receive emails from Lightyear directly. These will be communications such as raising disputes, requesting statements and receiving purchase orders. As such, you will be advised to whitelist our lightyear.cloud email domains and email records as found on this article so you do not miss any communications from us.
Real PDFs
It is imperative that you email us real PDFs. A real PDF is a PDF generated by a system as opposed to via a scanner or imaging software. They contain metadata, and Lightyear reads that data. Scans of paper invoices that are saved as PDF files are not real PDF bills. Further information on ‘what is a system generated PDF’ can be found here.
The vast majority of the world’s billing, invoicing or sales system produces PDF documents by default, available to be sent upon request. If you have to date been providing us with hand written bills, or if you have been generating those bills on a word processor or similar, we would ask you to download or buy some software designed to produce bills electronically ( Zoho Invoice or similar).
We also ask that you send each bill as a separate PDF. You can still send multiple bills in the one email, but they need to be separate bills/PDFs.
About Lightyear
All line-item details (product names, product descriptions. product codes, quantities) are extracted with 100% accuracy, in real time, from the electronic bill with coding applied to each line item (GL codes, tax rates, categories, classes, department and more). Lightyear will check the bill to ensure the GST/VAT is correct and can price check each line item against our agreed price list (if applicable).
The bill then enters a robust and intuitive approvals workflow. Each bill is sent to the correct person for approval at each stage in the approvals process.
Line item detail on each bill is then exported to accounting software in a 1-click process, and your inventory levels can be exported into inventory software too.
Each bill is then stored in the Lightyear cloud for the regulatory period for your country/region.
For more information please visit www.lightyear.cloud.
Thank-you very much for your cooperation.
Kind Regards
Don't forget to insert your Lightyear email address into this letter
With that sent, let's slicken your AP processes further with these Tips and Tricks.
Check out our
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