A new trend called cloud computing is making its presence felt across the globe. It is believed that in the coming years, most computing will happen with the help of the Internet services. All diverse computer programs with varied applications that we commonly use will be doled out with various services like subscriptions provided to the Internet cloud. This is an effective and unique style of IT or information technology by making computer services and network less complicated and easily accessible by centralising memory, storage and processing. Microsoft leads from the front in this domain. 

Microsoft provides license and also supports different kinds of products and services that are predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions. Microsoft provides us a wide platform for developing solutions, programming languages, various developmental tools as well as application servers for various kinds of functions.

Microsoft SharePoint is a web application platform that is developed by Microsoft for small scale as well as large scale organisations. It is a one stop solution and therefore it can replace multiple web application and affirm different combinations of enterprise website requirements. This is related with document management systems as well as web content management.

The multi-purpose platform from Microsoft SharePoint allows managing and provisioning for intranet portals, extranets and websites, social networking tools, collaboration spaces, managing different documents and files, business intelligence tooling, process/information integration, enterprise search as well as third party developed solution.

SharePoint can accommodate several web applications at one place. As a cloud computing solution or as a part of office 365 and BPOS it can be used as a free product. It offers different methods of customisation and configuration of web areas that have granular governance arrangements. Some of the most common applications of Microsoft SharePoint are:

·         Intranet Portal

·         Extranet sites

·         Internet sites

·         Enterprise content and document management

Now some of the reasons why we should use Microsoft SharePoint services:

• It extends exchange server
• This is highly customisable
• The solutions are scalable
• Extends InfoPath
• Dynamically analysed storage system
• It can also be data transport mechanism
• Can be backed up by single operation

If you look for Hosted Microsoft CRM, then you will know that it too helps customers by centralising all the details of the clients, their correspondences, for finding out business prospects as well as capture workflow. But, at the end of the day, you need to choose the business model that works best for you.  

Invoice processing involves the management of inward bound invoices from the point of onset to post. An invoice comes in different variations and nature. Generally, invoices can be divided into two different categories. They are:

• Invoices that are linked with a request
• Invoices that does not own linked request

There are several organisations that have comprehensible operating instructions concerning the processing of inward bound invoices. In most of the organisations there are varied sets of instructions that are generally implemented to get ordered invoices or unleveraged ordered invoices. The central department that is generally associated with process invoices is known as account payable department. If this particular procedure involves supplier invoice then it is referred to as P2P or purchase-to-pay or requisition to check.

The invoice is generated after the delivery of the product and is sent to the company through mail, autotype and fax. The moment the invoice comes the account payable individual must see that the document that came in is in fact an invoice. Then it is the responsibility of the company to sort the invoices into different groups. But, in all organisations it is not the same. Then this is forwarded to the individual or concerned department that has placed the order. To check out the amount invoiced is correctly mentioned it is important to see that the invoice should match against purchase order. If both of them match then the authority responsible should sign on it. Then the invoices get posted to the accounting system once it is approved.

But, with the help of technology these days the procedure has become much easier and after the invoice comes in the individual responsible should only have to scan it into automation software. Then the invoice gets scanned into a text form. Then the data is matched. Finally the individual who is responsible gets an email so that he/she can approve the invoice.

Some of the benefits of invoice processing are:

• Increases revenue
• Bridges good relationship with the customers
• Unlimited access
• Gets hold of data and receives feedback quickly
• Makes report quickly to examine the data that is gathered
• Full visibility about what is taking place

Invoice processing can be considered as a part of business process management or BPM. Thus, in order to reduce your errors on payments invoice processing is done.