Accounts payable management
- What approval costs a month
- $4,300.80
- Hours on routine handling
- 120
- Hours on exceptions
- 14.4
Every figure on this page is computed from the inputs entered, by the method stated below it. Monthendly publishes no benchmark close time, no industry average DPO and no accounting standard: the tasks, the minutes, the rate and the exception rate are yours, and the defaults are a worked example to replace with your own figures.
Accounts payable management is the part of the finance function that decides whether the close is calm or frantic. It covers who is allowed to commit spend, how an invoice is checked before it is paid, when suppliers actually get paid, and what the payables balance is telling you about cash. In a small team all of that is usually one person's habit, learned in a previous job, never written down, and invisible until they leave. This page sets out what managing payables involves for a team of one to fifteen, the four numbers worth watching, and the point at which the habit needs to become a system.
Open the Accounts payable invoice approval process Free to use. No account, no card, no sign-up.
Decide who can commit, before the invoice exists
Most payables problems are procurement problems arriving late: somebody ordered something nobody approved, and the argument happens when the invoice lands. A short written rule about who can commit what removes more payables pain than any software does.
Check it the same way every time
Matching against the order and the receipt is the check. Applying it consistently, including to the supplier everybody likes, is what makes it a control rather than a habit. Consistency is also what lets you automate later.
Watch four numbers, not forty
Total payables, the overdue share, the part over sixty days, and days payable outstanding. The free aging worksheet computes all four from your own balances; on its worked example, $82,700 of payables is 42% overdue with 5% past sixty days and DPO of 30.26.
Accounts payable management: common questions
Who should own accounts payable in a small team? One named person, with a second who can cover. The failure mode in small teams is not the wrong owner, it is no owner and three people each assuming somebody else chased the approval.
Should we pay early for a discount? It is an arithmetic question about your cost of cash and the discount offered, and it is yours to answer. What matters for the close is that the decision is made deliberately rather than by whoever happens to run the payment batch.
How does managing payables affect the close? Directly. Everything unapproved at the cut-off becomes an accrual or a surprise, and the size of that pile is the single best predictor of how long the close takes.
Will it do what you need for Accounts payable management?
Tell us how your close runs and we will tell you straight whether Monthendly Pro fits it today, whether it is coming, or whether you need a different product instead. A person reads these and replies.