How to validate your telecom invoices are correct?

How do I check that my invoices match my network?

Matching your invoices to your inventory and services is basic TEM. It is about keeping track of your supply and demand, knowing what you pay for and ironing out any kinks in the system as you go along.

Good TEM practice will result in the right invoices being paid to the right people at the right time. Bad TEM practice will result in chaos.

So, how do you make sure that every invoice matches your active network? By keeping excellent records, and knowing how to deal with anomalies.

Managing the perfect payment system

The job of every accounting clerk is to receive an invoice and work out whether or not it is OK to pay. That means that for every invoice received – and the multiple line items possibly contained within each – you must be able to link back to the goods or services which are being billed; their true value (as per your supplier contracts); their volume and/or their duration of use; and any outages, discounts, returns or package deals which should be deducted from the original cost.

That’s a lot of information. And whether you are processing 100 telecoms-related line items per month or 10,000, you can guarantee that there will be a few overpayments and a few underpayments from time to time.

The problem is, every time you overlook an invoice, you are potentially damaging an important supplier relationship, or breaching a carefully worded contract. And of course, every time you overpay an invoice, you are losing your company money.

Managing the perfect telecoms payment system is at the very heart of good TEM practice. You should be able to take every invoice and reconcile it against a system which is being updated on a daily basis.

Managing the perfect disputes process

The perfect payment system will allow you to process the majority of invoices (the correct ones) quickly and efficiently. But what happens when you spot an anomaly?

Any time an invoice cannot be matched up with your inventory, you need to flag it up. The chances are that the anomaly will be easily sorted out, but in the meantime you need to demonstrate to the ‘powers that be’ that you are on top of your payment systems and ready to weed out and handle any mistakes.

By flagging up each disputed invoice, you can more easily identify patterns in your payment process (e.g. maybe one particular supplier is consistently overcharging you; or maybe your TEM system has a blind spot when it comes to updating certain items). If you have a good payment system in place, this will allow you to raise any disputes as quickly as possible, so that the vendor in question has a chance to amend the mistake before the next invoice run.

Over the years we have seen so many errors and mistakes: the same circuit billed twice, the same circuit billed both monthly AND quarterly and invoice numbers repeated – with the only exception being a 0 and a O between them (we bet you had to go back a second time to spot the difference between the zero and the capital letter ‘o’, didn’t you?!)

That takes us back to the fact that every invoice payment department, whether Accounts Payable, Finance, Telecoms or IT has to have its own dispute process in place – and if it doesn’t, then you need to create one!

Practice makes perfect

Once you have installed a great payment system and a thorough disputes process, you should find that you are able to verify your invoices much more quickly. However, that could mean that you end up with a few outstanding or overpaid invoices at the end of each month, the value of which may or may not impact on your company’s profit margins.

You may be asked to justify the invoices which are under dispute, or the payments which are outstanding at the end of your billing cycle.

In order to catch these issues, set a deadline for each monthly billing cycle – say, the last day of the month. On this day, make sure that every single invoice is either paid or stopped, so that you will have a chance to review the past month’s work and identify the weaknesses in your systems and processes.

Practice always makes perfect, and with each month that passes you should find that you have a leaner, cleaner system which is supported by a strong disputes process.

But as ever, this is all made easier if you have a proper inventory management system in place to help you – only by knowing what network you have, can you know if you’re paying for things that you shouldn’t actually have, or aren’t actually using!

Check out our Invoice Automation and see for yourself how easy it is to validate your invoices 1 – 2 – 3 Click Boom done!