Beanworks accounts payable review

Beanworks is a software package aimed squarely at business owners who need to take a more efficient approach to accounts payable tasks. The AP software allows you to centralize your activities, match purchase orders to invoices and receivings as well as automate many of those everyday accounts payable tasks. Users can use the automatic option for approving POs, invoices and payments while the intuitive system lets administrators find and track any and every AP document. 

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Vendor payments can also be approved and released in similarly smooth fashion, thanks to the streamlined workflow provided by Beanworks. The company bills itself as a company built by accountants for accountants and the productivity tools found inside Beanworks should certainly go a long way to helping with cost savings over time.

Pricing

While there don't appear to be any obvious indications of pricing for Beanworks there is a way of working out just how beneficial it might be for your business. If you head to the ROI calculator page and enter the relevant data it’s possible to get a clear idea of what sort of return on investment you can expect by purchasing the software. Once you have a picture of the savings it’s worth getting in touch with the Beanworks team, either for an initial demo or to proceed with signing up for the software.

Features

The main purpose of Beanworks AP software is to help businesses tackle four core areas that include purchase orders, invoices, payments and expenses. The purchase order aspect aims to improve control and offer much better detail over your digital paperwork, which should allow you to make the PO process much more simplified. It’s possible to set and manage spending limits, including by department, project, vendor and so on. 

Beanworks also has the capacity to automatically match purchase orders to invoices. Similarly efficient is the way that it’s possible to create purchase requisitions inside Beanworks, allowing for an automated PO approval process. Beanworks designers have also worked at speeding up the processing of invoices too, nine times faster they say, with powerful search tools that let you scour invoices by vendor, GL code, amount or indeed any other information relating to the document you're after. 

Usefully, Beanworks can also be configured to have customized approval channels reducing the risk of errors. Meanwhile, GL smart coding helps minimize the amount of manual data input required. The payment process has also been re-engineered, with much more capacity for setting up robust vendor payments. A two-way syncing process, for example, helps reduce the chance of duplicate payments, while it’s also easy to submit batch payments for approval. In addition, the system allows for setting your preferred method of payment, including check, ACH, e-check or virtual credit card.

Performance

Adding to the appeal is the fact that Beanworks has also been designed to be mobile friendly. This means that it’s possible to access and approve invoices in both iOS and Android devices, which could be a real boon for business owners and administrators who might not necessarily be desk or office based. 

Beanworks also claims that it is possible to implement its fully automated accounts payable system in under six hours. Delivering extra value to the overall performance appeal of Beanworks is the way that it can be plugged in to popular accounting software packages. This includes the likes of key players Intuit QuickBooks, Sage, Sage Intacct and Oracle NetSuite.

Ease of use

Beanworks comes highly praised for its easy to use and highly intuitive interface. Considering just how many tasks it can handle the software is certainly powerful, and made all the better by its level of automation. The main dashboard area is a prime example of this, with a clear and concise layout that might look quite minimalistic but contains all of the tools needed to get the job done. 

There are plenty of handy productivity tools within the system too, with for example, the ability to stay on top of late payments thanks to the option for creating an on-demand ageing report. 

Similarly being able to automate the approval process means that you can quickly and easily release payments. The other bonus here is that Beanworks can be integrated to work alongside your accounting software, which means that you can also export batch payment data with very little work. In fact, Beanworks describes this as a two-click operation.

Support

Considering just how potent Beanworks is it's actually been nicely designed and therefore provides a fairly gentle learning curve for business owners and their administrators. However, if anyone gets bogged down along the way Beanworks comes with a full support structure, along with a help center on the website that details all of the core features and functions in more detail. 

There’s also a very solid resources section of the site too, which contains all manner of white papers, infographics and case studies that home in on many key areas of AP automation. It’s an excellent supplement to the rest of the support offered by Beanworks. If you crave more AP insight then there’s a Beanworks blog too.

Final verdict

Beanworks provides a complete solution for any business that needs to get a firm grips on its AP procedures. Having a raft of tools at your disposal that include key areas such as purchase orders, invoices, payments and expenses is one thing. However, adding in a liberal smattering of automation means that Beanworks should prove cost effective over time. 

Using the return on investment tool on the Beanworks website will help you see just what the possibilities are. While it seems hard to fault the set of features and the overall design and usability of this software, some more obvious off-the-shelf pricing would perhaps be beneficial. Nevertheless, there’s plenty here to make you investigate should you feel the need to make better use of your time when dealing with AP tasks.

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