Scanning an invoice for accounts payable seems like a task with nothing in it, and the mistakes only become visible eighteen months later when somebody needs the document and it does not answer the question. By then the paper is gone. The four mistakes are consistent across the teams that make them: scanning only the first page, scanning at a resolution where a figure is ambiguous, filing by date rather than against the supplier and invoice, and scanning after posting rather than before. None is difficult to avoid, and each is close to impossible to fix afterwards. This page is the four, and what each one costs when it surfaces.
Scanning only the first page, and only the front
Multi-page invoices carry the detail that explains the total, and delivery notes carry conditions on the reverse. A first-page scan captures the number and loses the argument. When a supplier queries an amount two years later, the page you did not scan is invariably the one that mattered.
Filing by date instead of against the record
A scan in a dated folder can be found by whoever filed it and by nobody else. Attached to the supplier and the invoice number, it can be found by anyone, including a successor and an auditor. This is the single most consequential of the four.
Scanning after posting rather than before
Scanning before entry means the document is in front of the person coding it, and the capture feeds the entry. Scanning afterwards makes it an archiving chore that gets deferred, which is how a box of unscanned paper accumulates in the first place.
Questions people ask about accounts payable scanning invoice
Should suppliers just email PDFs?
Yes, wherever they will, and asking is usually enough. Every paper invoice that becomes a PDF at source removes the scanning step and its four mistakes entirely.
What about receipts and small documents?
Same rules, and they are worse offenders on legibility. A photographed receipt that cannot be read is a record you do not have.
How long should we keep the scans?
A retention policy question for your jurisdiction and advisers, and one worth writing down rather than defaulting to forever.