Handing off AP without switching systems

When a modular company thinks about outsourcing accounts payable, the worry is usually the change, not the cost. New software. Moving data. A team that feels replaced. Here’s what the first 30 days really look like when you keep your systems and your people.

What doesn’t change

• Your ERP, your AP inbox, and your payment system. We log in to what you already use.
• Your people. If you have an AP clerk, a controller, or an office manager on bills today, they stay. We free up their time by taking the tasks they don’t want to do.
• Purchasing, receiving, and approving payments. Those stay with you and your procurement team. The cash never moves without you.

We work as an extension of your business. If you have special vendor relationships, or someone you want copied on every email, let us know. We’ll build that into how we handle your account.

Week 1: access and walkthrough

First, we need access to the inbox your vendors send bills to. It’s usually something like AP@yourcompany.com or accounting@yourcompany.com. If you don’t have an inbox just for that, step one is to set one up. Then you start teaching vendors to send their bills there. After that, we usually need two more systems. One is your bill pay system, like Ramp, QBO, BILL, or Brex. The other is your ERP, where purchase invoices (PIs) are created against POs.

Once access is set up, it’s best to share anything that shows how you handle vendor bills. That could be an AP policy, quirks to look out for in your ERP, or special exceptions. Tell us anything that really can’t be messed up. Tell us who to go to with questions about a missing PO, a wrong PO, and so on. What we want is a big-picture view of how AP works at your company.

Week 2: the backlog and the first vendor bills

We start with the backlog. It’s usually pretty easy to work through, because if you haven’t paid a vendor, they will be letting you know! All you need to ask for is an up-to-date statement from each vendor. That’s your list of bills to get into the system. Sadly, AP works like everything else in life: the loudest voice usually gets paid first. So if you have a really loud vendor, that’s normally where we start. But there’s a lot of room to adjust. If some vendors matter more because of strategy or a key relationship, we can start with them. We’ll ask your team lead for a list of vendors to put first.

Week 3: the weekly schedule settles in

We set the schedule at the start, and it depends on your volume and how urgent things are. Once everything is caught up, the vendor emails get less urgent, less angry, and less intense. Then we can settle into checking the inbox two or three times a week. This is flexible. Sometimes we start at three times a week, find that’s too much, and drop to twice. Either way, bills get prepped so vendors can be paid by the due date, or by your company’s payment policy.

The big thing to get right in week 3 is making sure each team has a contact person. That means procurement, supply chain, logistics, and so on. We need someone to reach out to when we can’t find a PO or keep having problems with a vendor. We also map out who to go to when something goes wrong, plus a way to rush an urgent vendor payment that somehow got missed. Who can we go to when there are issues? That’s really what we need to know.

Week 4: what the team’s week looks like now

Once we’ve settled into the role, we start making it as smooth as we can! For example, one client’s ERP data was easy to export. So we built a custom workbook for their procurement team. It shows if a PI goes over the amount on its PO, and if the PI amount and quantity match the PO. This makes it much faster for them to review and approve PO overages. It tells them exactly what to look at before they approve the PI for payment.

Questions we hear before starting

Do you need admin access to our ERP or bank?

Admin access? Not at all. We will never push or make a payment without your direct approval. In fact, we try to stay away from that as much as we can. We much prefer that someone on your team is the one who sends the payment, as a form of final review.

Who answers vendors when they email or call?

We can do that. If it’s a question about pricing or scope, we forward it to the right person. If it’s only about the bill, we handle it. We talk with the vendor, ask for support for the bill, and update vendor info so your system stays current.

What if our process is mostly in someone’s head?

It usually is, so we’re used to it! If that person still works there, we can usually learn the process in a few video calls with them. If they don’t, congratulations, you get to start fresh! We’ll use our experience to build the process from scratch with you, or piece together the one you already have.

What the onboarding fee covers

Onboarding is real work. It means getting access, learning how you run AP, and catching up any backlog. That’s what the one-time onboarding fee covers. After that, it’s one fixed monthly fee based on how many vendor bills you have. Never hourly.

Next step

If you’re weighing whether to outsource accounts payable, our Outsourced AP page lays out what’s covered and what stays with you. Or book 15 minutes and bring your vendor bill volume and the systems you use.