The commonest waste in paper-based payables is not the scanning, it is scanning the same document more than once, or scanning it late, after it has already been photocopied, passed round and annotated. Getting the scan to happen once, at arrival, and making that scan the thing everything downstream refers to, removes more work than any improvement in the scanning itself.
Scan at arrival, not at processing
If a document is scanned when payables gets to it, it has already spent days travelling and may exist in several annotated copies. Scanning at arrival gives you a received date you can rely on, which matters for payment terms, and it means the moment of arrival and the moment of visibility are the same. The physical copy can then follow at its own pace.
One scan, referred to by everybody
Once the image is on the record, approvals, queries and exception notes should point at it rather than at a copy. Emailed attachments proliferate, get annotated separately and drift apart. A single referenced image also means an approver and a payables clerk are looking at the same thing, which resolves a surprising number of disagreements.
Keep the annotations off the image
Notes, codings and approvals belong as data attached to the record, not written on a scan. A stamped and scribbled image cannot be searched, cannot be reported on, and cannot be corrected without losing the history. Keeping the document clean and the metadata structured is what makes the archive useful years later.
Questions people ask about accounts payable scanning invoice
Who should scan?
Whoever opens the post, as part of opening it. Passing paper to finance to scan adds a day and a handling step for no benefit.
What date should we record?
The date the invoice reached the organisation, not the date payables opened it. Payment terms usually run from receipt, and the difference matters.
Should we keep the paper?
Until you are confident the scan is complete and legible, and thereafter according to your retention policy rather than convenience.