SoftCo has announced the addition of yet another innovative feature to its core procure-to-pay automation solution, SoftCo P2P. SoftCo Auto-Coding solves the prevalent problem faced by finance teams of accurately allocating costs across multiple departments.

This issue typically arises when a supplier invoice is received which contains multiple line items related to various cost centers. In most cases, a member of the accounts payable (AP) team has to manually code the invoice in order to assign the costs correctly. SoftCo Auto-Coding, an industry first, enables the automatic coding and allocation of costs to multiple cost centers without any intervention from AP.

In the case of purchase order (PO) invoices, automatic cost allocation is achieved by ensuring that all cost center information is detailed at the point of purchase requisition. This means that the business purchaser can stipulate to which cost center each line item relates, and ensure that the relevant business approver for that cost center signs off on the spend before it is committed. When the subsequent invoice is received and matched to the PO in SoftCo P2P, the invoice is automatically coded.

The same principle is applied to recurring, non-PO invoices like utilities by creating templates to pre-determine the distribution of costs for specific suppliers’ invoices, thus removing repetitive, manual tasks from AP and considerably improving efficiency.

“While working with finance teams in hundreds of organizations worldwide, we have seen the problem of cost allocation crop up time and time again. This new feature solves a major headache for organizations as it gives managers tighter control over purchasing while also providing finance with granular reporting and visibility over spend.”

Garret Pearse, Senior Consultant, SoftCo