Manual invoice handling - a hidden cost that never reaches your reports
Five hundred invoices a month entered manually into an accounting system amount to around 108 hours of work. That is more than two thirds of a full-time post spent solely on handling documents - not on analysing costs, monitoring cash flow or supporting the board in making decisions. The more invoices there are, the clearer it becomes that a manual document workflow is not free. It costs, above all, your employees' time.
A study by Fitek shows that manually processing a single purchase invoice takes an average of 12.9 minutes. This covers entering the data, assigning the correct accounting codes, checking compliance and making any corrections. Overall, handling purchase and sales invoices takes up as much as 28% of the average accountant's working time. That is almost a third of their working week devoted to repetitive, mechanical tasks.
The problem is that the cost of a single invoice never appears in any financial report. It only becomes visible when someone calculates it over a whole month or year. It then turns out that the company is not paying for an individual document, but for hundreds of hours of work scattered across the budget in such a way that nobody counts them separately.
How much does it cost in złoty? Concrete calculations
The median salary of a specialist-level accountant is PLN 7,660 gross per month. Assuming a full-time post, an hour of their work costs around PLN 47.80 gross. This means that manually processing a single invoice generates a cost of around PLN 10.20. Importantly, this figure does not include the additional costs resulting from errors, the need to make corrections or delays in the document workflow.
The difference becomes particularly visible at a larger scale of operations. Here is how the costs look depending on invoice volume:
- 500 invoices per month - around 108 hours of work, a cost of around PLN 5,150 per month, or nearly PLN 62,000 per year
- 1,000 invoices per month - the time needed to handle them already exceeds one full-time post
- Each individual invoice - on average 12.9 minutes of work and a gross cost of PLN 10.20
Bear in mind that the calculations above include only the employee's gross salary. They do not include employer contributions, workstation costs, training or the costs of absences. The real cost of manual invoice processing is therefore even higher in practice.
Handling an invoice is not just "typing in an amount"” to the system
It is worth understanding exactly what the process of handling one invoice involves. "Invoice handling” does not mean simply typing an amount into the accounting software. The process is made up of many small tasks, each of which may take only a few minutes, but across hundreds of documents they add up to dozens or even hundreds of hours.
Stages of manual invoice handling
- Receiving the document (email, post, platform)
- Checking the formal details and their accuracy
- Reading the information from the document
- Entering the data into the accounting system
- Assigning the cost to the appropriate account
- Posting instructions (dekretacja) for the document
- Sending the invoice for approval by an authorised person
- Searching for any missing information and correcting errors
There is also the cost of switching between systems. The invoice may be in one place, the accounting data in another and the approval process in a third. If information does not flow between them automatically, the employee becomes the link integrating these systems - which further extends the time of each operation and increases the risk of error.
KSeF is only the beginning - what happens to an invoice after it is received?
The introduction of the National e-Invoicing System (KSeF) changes the way invoices are sent and received, but the mere appearance of a document in the system does not mean it has been posted to the books. A structured invoice contains data in XML format, so it can be processed by IT systems. KSeF also provides an API that allows integration with financial and accounting software.
This is a good start that opens the way to automating subsequent stages of the process, but it does not do so automatically. In a company without suitable integrations, an employee may still be needed to download the document, check the data, transfer the information to the accounting system or assign the invoice to the right process. That is why the question "does the company use KSeF?” says little about how much time the accounting team spends handling invoices. What matters far more is what happens to the document after it is received.
Companies that are serious about optimising their accounting processes should ensure not only compliance with KSeF, but above all full integration of the invoicing system with the accounting software. Only then does automation bring real savings in time and costs.
Repetition costs more than a single error
Errors in invoice processing are one of the obvious arguments for automation, but their cost is not always easy to calculate. A typo in a document number, a wrong amount or an incorrect cost allocation can mean having to re-verify, correct the data and spend further minutes of work. It is important to distinguish between an error made by the issuer of the document and an error made while posting it. In the latter case, the problem is above all the additional work on the company's side.
When calculating the cost of a manual workflow, however, it is worth starting with what is certain: even a correctly processed invoice takes up an employee's time. If automation reduces manual work by, say, 75%, the company will recover around 81 hours a month. At a rate of PLN 47.88 gross per hour, this equates to work worth around PLN 3,880 per month, or PLN 46,500 per year.
The aim of automation does not have to be reducing the number of people in the accounting department. It can just as well be changing what those people spend most of their day doing - shifting their time from mechanical tasks to analysis, control and supporting the board in making business decisions.
Professional accounting services instead of a manual invoice workflow
Optimising accounting processes is not only a matter of tools and IT systems. It is also about choosing the right partner, who will ensure an efficient document workflow, integration with KSeF and ongoing tax and payroll services. Companies that use professional accounting services from Global Accounting can count on support with full accounting, VAT, CIT and PIT returns, management reports and KSeF services - without tying up internal resources in repetitive, time-consuming tasks.
If your company processes dozens or hundreds of invoices a month and you are wondering how to free up your accounting team's time for tasks of real strategic value, it is worth reviewing your current document handling model. The first consultation (15 minutes) is free - call +48 505 684 412 or write to [email protected] to find out which solution may best suit your company's needs.
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