Faye Wang

Open invoices are a common and helpful tool in the world of accounts payable! Familiarizing yourself with what they are, how they work, and when to use them, can help you more quickly and seamlessly scale your own accounts payable processes. 

Outsource your accounts payable department. Companies that prioritize accounts payable use automated systems and research-proven best practices to deliver satisfactory and timely payments every single time.

Many types of EDI payment methods are available to businesses. If you are considering EDI for the first time or are expanding your existing EDI platform, there is at least one method to fit your budget, technology structure, and business transaction needs.

It’s possible to calculate the variable expense ratio for virtually any time period — it can be calculated for the full financial year, by quarter, or even by month or week. The variable expense ratio can also be worked out per unit. 

To help with the vendor management process, a company can use a software application to manage its vendors in one system. The software, called the vendor management system (VMS), automates vendor selection, hiring, and payment processes. 

Having an automated accounting system is now considered a must-have for larger companies that deal with thousands of transactions a day, but it’s a relatively well-kept secret when it comes to smaller and medium-sized businesses.

The AP process starts when the accounts payable department receives an invoice. Invoices can arrive through a huge variety of different methods, including electronic invoices, physical mail, fax and many other possibilities.

AP automation software helps you achieve advanced PO matching by supporting two- and three-way matching. Tolerance ranges can be customized to ensure unmatched invoices are only paid when proper permission is provided.

Using AP software that allows mobile on-the-go access is another way to boost AP department productivity. You might find the whole “streamlining your AP workflows” to be a daunting task, but it certainly improves the efficiency of your operations.

Using invoice automation mitigates the risk of fraud and leads to numerous other business advantages, including enhanced payment processing efficiency, better allocation of resources, superior reporting capabilities, and on-time, verifiable payments.

When you start looking into automating your accounts payable workflow, you’ll notice common features across AP software systems: tax form processing, electronic funds transfers, and of course, OCR invoice processing.

The supplier payment process involves tax compliance, fraud monitoring, currency exchange rates, banking requirements, and more. If your supplier payment process can’t nimbly respond to these factors, you’ll have to manually adjust to each vendor’s situation.

You want to integrate as seamlessly as possible with existing accounting and ERP systems. However there are many key steps along the supplier payment process that still require significant manual effort beyond sending out payment instructions to the transfer API for bank, ACH, and wire services.

Accounts payable jobs will change in the future. New technology is obsoleting the position and a new way to think about what the job description looks like.