Avoiding Accounts Payable Nostalgia

Accounts Payable…was so great in the past. Remember the “good ole days” when you would take an invoice, key it into your accounting application, walk over to your internal buyer to get their approval, email the supplier for their banking transfer details, and log into the bank portal to set up a wire transfer payment? It seems like so long ago…

Remember when paper checks got returned, because the vendor was no longer at that address, and you had to find a way to contact them for their new address, and send them another check?

Or how about those times when, at the end of the year (while you’re trying to close out the year) you had to get a vendor’s tax identity, but they moved or completely went out of business, and you had no way to contact them?

Here’s a fond memory. Do you remember when you acquired that company in that Australian city you could barely pronounce the name of and you were suddenly doing Accounts Payable for them remotely in their currency? And every month, you had to convert USD to AUD just to make payroll? And then you had to reconcile all that back into the master ledger?

You know what I heard? The last person to do Accounts Payable as a full-time job was already born. What a shame that no one wants to do Accounts Payable anymore—AP is such a rewarding career filled with excitement, innovation, and creativity!

If any of this is not just a sentimental journey to simpler times, but where you are in the present day and foreseeable future, then you, my friend, are living in the past. You’re smashing rocks endlessly in a self-imposed Stone Age. You’re a VHS tape in the age of streaming video. You’re dial-up internet in the age of 5G LTE.

Accounts Payable is not some artisanal craft to admire. It’s work that needs to get done and that no one should have to do, because your human potential is so much greater. A modern AP solution is one that removes this busywork so that you can do greater and your organization can do greater–for your customers, for your investors, for your career.