Configuring accounts payable in an ERP is mostly a set of decisions that are cheap to make and expensive to change, which is an uncomfortable combination for a team doing it once. Approval hierarchies, matching tolerances, the supplier master structure and how documents attach are all straightforward to set on day one and disruptive to revisit two years in, because by then they have history behind them. This page is the four decisions worth spending real time on before go-live, what tends to be got wrong in each, and the general principle that makes all four easier: configure for the process you have, not the one you intend to have.
Approval hierarchy: simpler than you think you need
The temptation is to model the org chart. The result is a hierarchy that breaks whenever somebody is away and which nobody can explain. Thresholds and a named alternate cover almost everything, and a simple structure survives reorganisation.
Matching tolerances and the supplier master
Tolerances set too tight produce exception queues that get bypassed; set too loose they stop being a control. The supplier master is the one people regret most: duplicate suppliers created because nobody could find the existing one are painful to merge later and are a fraud signal in their own right.
Document attachment, and configuring for the process you have
Decide early whether images live in the ERP or elsewhere, because moving them later is a migration. And configure for how you actually work now: an ERP set up for an aspirational purchase-order discipline you do not yet have produces exceptions on most of your spend from day one. On the worked example on this site, 400 invoices at three touches of six minutes with a 12% exception rate is 134.4 hours a month: $4,300.80 at a $32 loaded rate, $10.75 an invoice and $51,609.60 a year.
Questions people ask about accounts payable erp
Should we use the ERP's approval workflow or email?
The ERP's, if approvers will use it. If they will not, that is the thing to fix, because email approvals are not recorded evidence in any useful sense.
How do we avoid duplicate suppliers?
Make searching easy and creating slightly harder, and review new suppliers monthly. That review is also one of the highest-value fraud checks available.
Can configuration be changed later?
Technically yes and practically with difficulty, because history was created under the old settings. Tolerances are the easiest to revisit; the supplier master is the hardest.