If you're still relying on manual accounts payable processes, it’s holding your finance team back. But you already know that.
You’ve seen the inefficiencies up close—chasing approvals, missing invoices, late payments, frustrated suppliers. It’s slow, error-prone, and costly.
Now it’s time to turn your frustration into a compelling business case for change.
Creating a solid business case is vital to proving your automation project will deliver measurable benefits. A well-calculated business case must give clear insight into all the potential gains of automation.
But a winning case for AP automation goes beyond just cost savings. It shows how automation drives growth, mitigates risk, and transforms your finance team into a strategic asset.
For accounts payable teams, this means demonstrating time savings for your team members to focus on higher value tasks, increased working capital generated from early payment discounts or protected cash flow by eliminating erroneous, duplicate and fraudulent payments—and that’s just the beginning.
The Basware Business Case Calculator is your first step to assessing the feasibility of your investment. It will help you identify the key metrics you need to articulate a business case that demonstrates the true, long-term value of AP automation.
Here are 6 tips on applying these findings to create a solid business case and position it internally to secure funding for your investment.
Too many business cases start and stop at “we’ll save $xx per invoice.” And yes— of course those savings matter. Cost efficiency is a critical part of the story. But not the whole story.
The bigger question is: what is not automating costing you? Well, quite a lot.
Use the calculator’s savings estimate as your foundation—but don’t stop there. Build on it to show the wider impact of automation: resilience, control, and the ability to support growth. Show the strategic cost of keeping things the way they are.
Modern CFOs aren’t just optimizing costs—they’re building agile, future-ready finance functions. Manual AP processes, by contrast, are fragile. They strain under pressure during periods of growth, acquisitions, supply chain disruption, or regulatory change. Automated AP is built for resilience. It scales without adding headcount, maintains control, and gives you the audit trail you need—without the overhead.
In a world of unpredictable market dynamics, ask: Can our current AP process absorb growth without proportional cost or risk? The calculator helps you answer that quantitatively—but the strategic narrative is what earns buy-in.
When you’re presenting to senior leadership, cost savings will get attention—but risk reduction is what gets investment. Manual AP processes expose your organization to a host of avoidable threats:
These are the risks that keep CFOs, controllers, and audit committees up at night. That’s why your business case should quantify not only what you’ll gain—but what you’ll avoid.
The calculator provides a financial entry point; your case should include operational risk and compliance dimensions too.
The strongest AP automation business cases highlight cross-functional benefits:
Engage these teams early. Understand their pain points and show how automation supports their goals. Turn a finance project into a company-wide improvement to gain broader support and make your case more powerful.
Stakeholders often stall on automation because they assume it’s a long, painful project. Counter this by showing how fast automation can pay off. A fast timeline helps convince stakeholders that the investment isn’t just necessary—it’s urgent. Use the calculator to model:
Use the calculator to quantify these metrics and then incorporate these results into your business case. Emphasize speed to impact—showing stakeholders not just the long-term ROI, but the quick wins they can expect right away. This builds momentum and makes your case far more compelling.
For example, Basware customer Ritchie Bros. achieved 65% automatic invoice matching on day one. This isn’t a future promise—it’s immediate value.
Data is essential, but decisions are made by people. Numbers won’t win hearts—or budgets. To wrap your numbers in a story that resonates ask yourself:
The calculator gives you the data. Your job is to connect the dots—showing not just the what, but the why now. When you combine numbers with a story that reflects real business pain and future potential, you turn your proposal into a clear call to action.
If your AP automation business case is built purely on cost per invoice, you’re underselling the opportunity. Basware’s Business Case Calculator helps you quantify value—but the real differentiator is how you frame that value to the business.
Automation is no longer a nice-to-have efficiency play. It’s a strategic lever for resilience, control, and scalability. And if you can show that, you’re not just asking for budget—you’re leading transformation.
Ready to make your case count? Try Basware’s Business Case Calculator and take the first step toward a smarter finance function.