Best practices for accounts payable bill pay automation

Accounts payable (AP) managers at growing companies often rely on informal processes, such as shared inboxes and spreadsheets, which can become inefficient as invoice volumes increase. These manual workarounds can lead to avoidable costs, including late fees, duplicate payments, and missed early-payment discounts, while also delaying month-end reconciliations.

Effective automation requires a strategic implementation order, focusing on centralizing intake, automating approvals, and tracking key performance indicators (KPIs). A primary signal that a process requires automation is when chasing approvals consumes more than a day of an AP manager's time per week, indicating that follow-up efforts are exceeding the actual time spent on invoice processing.