An accounts payable paperless workflow tends to be designed once and then quietly re-acquires paper at three predictable points. Understanding where they are is more useful than a diagram of the intended flow, because the intended flow is fine and the re-entry points are where it fails. They are approval, exceptions, and anything involving a third party who is not on your system. Each has a specific fix, and none of the fixes is a policy. This page is the three points, what causes each, and how teams that stay paperless have closed them.
Re-entry point one: approval under time pressure
The approver is unavailable digitally and the cut-off is close, so somebody prints and walks it round. The fix is a delegate rule decided in advance, so an absent approver has a recorded alternate rather than an urgent workaround.
Re-entry point two: exceptions with several documents
Comparing an invoice, an order and a delivery note is genuinely easier on paper, which is why exception handling is where printing survives longest. A second screen closes most of it; accepting that this step is harder digital closes the rest.
Re-entry point three: anything involving an outsider
A supplier dispute, an auditor's sample, an insurer's request. Each tempts somebody to print a bundle. Attaching documents to records so a set can be exported cleanly removes the temptation. 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 and $10.75 an invoice.
Questions people ask about accounts payable paperless workflow
Is a fully paperless workflow realistic?
For payables, in most small businesses, yes. The exceptions are rarely regulatory and usually habitual.
How do we know if paper is creeping back?
Ask where the printer usage is coming from, or simply ask the team what they print and why. Both take five minutes and neither is done often enough.
Does going paperless change our controls?
The controls should be the same and the evidence gets better, because a digital approval is recorded and a signature on a printout is a photograph of a signature.