What are accounts payable? Process, benefits, and best practices

Accounts payable (AP) covers a company’s short-term obligations to suppliers for goods or services received, and effective management supports cash flow, compliance, spending analysis, and supplier relationships. Unlike accounts receivable, which tracks money owed to a business by customers, AP tracks invoices a business must verify, approve, record, schedule, pay, and reconcile, often through processes involving purchase orders and receiving reports. Manual AP workflows can create data-entry errors, payment delays, fraud risks, disconnected systems, and difficulties managing foreign-exchange costs for international suppliers. AP teams generally review invoices, assign expense codes, obtain approvals, schedule payments, maintain records, and reconcile vendor statements. Automation software can streamline invoice capture, approvals, payment processing, reconciliation, reporting, and real-time tracking, while potentially improving accuracy, security, visibility, and supplier payment timeliness. The material advises businesses evaluating AP tools to consider integrations, OCR and automation functions, customizable workflows, multi-currency support, reporting, scalability, and compliance features, and presents Airwallex as a platform combining bill payments with multi-currency accounts, cards, expense management, and accounting integrations.

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