Accounts Payable: From Processing to Performance

Course Overview

Accounts payable is where a surprising amount of organisational money quietly leaks: duplicate payments, missed settlement discounts, fraud that hides in weak controls, and supplier relationships soured by late payment. This course treats AP as a performance function, not a back office. Delegates learn to run a clean, controlled, measurable payables operation — and to spot the red flags that auditors and fraudsters both look for.

What You Will Achieve

• Run the invoice-to-pay cycle with clear controls at every step
• Detect and prevent duplicate payments and payables fraud
• Capture early-settlement discounts and manage payment timing deliberately
• Measure AP performance with metrics that matter beyond volume
• Manage supplier queries and statements without drowning in them

Who Should Attend

Accounts payable supervisors and clerks, financial accountants, shared-services team leaders and finance managers who own the payables process.

Course Outline

1. 01The invoice-to-pay cycle and its control points
2. 02Three-way matching: doing it properly without gridlock
3. 03Master data discipline: the supplier file as a control
4. 04Payables fraud: schemes, red flags and prevention
5. 05Payment runs, timing strategy and settlement discounts
6. 06Supplier statement reconciliations that actually get done
7. 07AP metrics and dashboards: measuring what matters
8. 08Automation and the future of the AP function