Quadient, a company focused on helping businesses to establish meaningful customer relationships through digital and physical channels, has announced a partnership with Xero, the cloud-based accounting software for small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The partnership will see Xero integrating with Quadient’s Accounts Payable (AP) capabilities in North America and the United Kingdom, significantly enhancing and streamlining accounting processes for SMEs.

The partnership comes as a beneficial move to Xero's 3.95 million subscribers who will now have access to Quadient’s AP automation solution. As a result, users can enjoy a seamless synchronisation of all AP processes, the company states.

The intelligent system covers various stages, ranging from receiving invoices and purchase orders to inputting payment data, thereby eliminating the need for manual data input or output. The system reduces the risk of human error, accelerates cash flow and provides a better understanding of a business's AP status.

Quadient's AP solution was recently named a Leader in Quadrant Knowledge Solutions' report SPARK Matrix for Accounts Payable Automation. When combined with Xero's proven expertise, customers can track and manage their finances more accurately.

The system utilises optical character recognition powered by AI to eliminate 83% of data entry. The reduction in data entry contributes to decreasing the average cost of processing an invoice from 15 to 2.

Prudence Musubi, Senior Accountant for ArcFyre International, a joint customer of Quadient and Xero, gave an insight into the operational efficiency of the system: "One thing that I love about the system is that it effectively eliminates duplicate payments, flagging such invoices for investigation."

"The system also allows for an easy report pulling process to verify if the content system has accurately captured the data in the invoices. The onboarding of Quadient AP with Xero was smooth, and we are already seeing positive results from the streamlined process."

Chris Hartigan, Chief Solution Officer, Intelligent Communication Automation at Quadient, expressed enthusiasm about the new partnership: "Quadient's strategy is to establish partnerships with the world's major enterprise resource planning and accounting platforms to bring industry-leading technology solutions to our mutual customers."

"By partnering with Xero, we are expanding access of Quadient AP to more accounting teams so they can focus on deeper, more strategic decisioning rather than manual invoice and payment processing."

Quadient's API integrations are designed to ensure data accuracy, consistency, security, and regulatory compliance, guaranteeing transparency and trustworthiness. The collaboration of Quadient and Xero promises to bring in a new era of automation and efficiency in accounting for SMEs, thereby fostering more strategic decision-making and improving business outcomes.