Best practice advice for accounts payable is usually abstract, and abstraction is where it fails: everybody agrees invoices should have a single arrival point and rather fewer businesses have written down what happens when one arrives elsewhere. This page gives examples rather than principles. It writes out the actual no-order rule, the actual approver map entry, the actual unapproved-list email and the actual duplicate check, in the form a small business could adopt this week. They are illustrations to adapt rather than a policy to copy, and the point is that each fits in a few lines, which is why the absence of them is a habit rather than a resource problem.
The no-order rule, written out
Something in the shape of: invoices without a purchase order up to a stated value are approved by the budget holder for that cost centre; above it, by the budget holder and a director; anything from a supplier not already on the ledger requires the supplier to be set up and reviewed first. Three clauses, and it removes the commonest cause of an invoice stalling.
The approver map entry, and the unapproved email
An approver map entry names the cost centre, the approver, the alternate and the threshold, on one line each. The unapproved email is equally plain: these invoices are waiting on you, this is the cut-off date, anything not approved by then will be accrued. Stating the consequence is what makes it work.
The duplicate check
At entry, match supplier and invoice number against existing records and refuse an exact repeat. Then monthly, sort by amount and look for the same value twice from one supplier, which catches the ones entered under a slightly different number. On the worked example on this site, $48,000 current, $21,000 at thirty days, $9,500 at sixty and $4,200 beyond is $82,700 owed, 42% of it overdue, with days payable outstanding of 30.26.
Questions people ask about accounts payable best practices examples
Can we copy these directly?
Adapt rather than copy: thresholds and cost centres are yours, and a rule with somebody else's numbers in it will not survive its first application.
Where should these live?
With the work, where a new starter and an approver will both find them. A policy folder is where documents go to stop being read.
How do we know they are working?
The unapproved pile at cut-off shrinks, and the exception rate falls. Both are measurable with the free worksheet on this site.