Paperless accounts payable is usually approached as an equipment question and is almost entirely a habit question. Buying a scanner and digitising the backlog is a weekend. Getting to the state where nobody prints an invoice to approve it, nobody keeps a personal folder of copies, and the digital record is the one people actually consult is a change in how three or four people work. Teams that treat it as a project finish the project and find paper still circulating six months later. This page is the three habits that decide whether a payables function is genuinely paperless, and the order to change them in.
Habit one: approvals stop being printed
The commonest reason paper survives is that approving is easier on paper, which is a comment on the approval interface rather than on paper. Fix approving on a phone and printing stops without being banned.
Habit two: nobody keeps a personal copy
Personal folders exist because people do not trust the shared record to be findable. That is a retrieval problem, and it is solved by filing against the supplier and invoice rather than by asking people to stop.
Habit three: the digital record is the one consulted
The test is what somebody reaches for when a supplier queries an invoice. If it is a drawer, the paper is still the record and everything digital is a copy. On the worked example on this site, 400 invoices at three touches of six minutes with a 12% exception rate is 134.4 hours a month, $4,300.80 at a $32 loaded rate and $10.75 an invoice.
Questions people ask about paperless accounts payable
How long does going paperless take?
The scanning is quick and the habits take a season, in our experience of watching teams do it. Expect the last printed approval to be several months after the scanner arrives.
Is paperless the same as automated?
No. Paperless means the document is digital; automated means steps run without a person. You can be entirely paperless with a completely manual process, and many teams sensibly stop there.
What about documents we are required to keep on paper?
Few are, but the question is jurisdictional and worth confirming with your own advisers rather than assuming either way.