Every company has a massive accounts payable workload without leaving any room for errors and manipulations. However, some mistakes will happen whether you give them proper attention or not. Therefore, it becomes necessary to continuously monitor the common issues to avoid snowballing into a huge roadblock. If you wish to bring effectiveness to your payables and maintain healthy relations with suppliers, keep track of the following technical failures or human errors that may occur and how you can solve them:

Paper processing:

If your business still relies on paperwork for its invoices and payments, it is high time you switch to automated accounting software. Since accounts payable consists of steps from invoice receiving to approval and payment, human involvement and paper management make the documents prone to errors, manipulations, fading, etc. It slows down the entire process, which leads to late invoices and frustrated vendors repeatedly asking for payments.

Matching errors:

When you manually process your accounts, you have to match every invoice, purchase order, receiving reports, payment status individually that consumes the considerable time of your employees. It leads to a cascading effect that slows down the other activities and leads to delays. Also, errors may or may not be efficiently discovered, leading to doubts about the accuracy of accounts payable. 

Following up with your suppliers:

On paper, your suppliers will continuously transmit accurate invoices to you. However, in reality, the scenario changes completely. There may be mistakes in their invoices that may require you to follow up with the suppliers and make changes. It requires you to take days off other work. 

Since these activities take up massive resources of the firm, outsourced accounting becomes a better option. 

Unauthorized supply invoices:

Sometimes a business may go off course and purchase from an unauthorized supplier to cater to urgent needs or other reasons. These invoices consume a considerable time of the accounts payable department as they have to gain approvals and verify the documents. 

Making payments eagerly:

It may bear harsh consequences when an AP department becomes eager to pay the invoices as soon as they arrive. Although there may be discounts and other benefits, paying too early even before the company receives the goods can make return difficult in case of damages. 

Lost invoices:

When you handle paper invoices, there is a high chance of losing them or destroying them. Even when you recover it, it may leave you with a hefty late amount to pay to the vendor. These invoices complicate the accounts payable process. 

Double payment:

Human or technical errors may result in paying an invoice twice. Further, your supplier may not be too happy to refund it. 

You can solve these problems by going paperless and adopting automation in your processes. Streamline your workflows, leverage early payment discounts and integrate your systems to maximise efficiency.