7 Innovative Features To Help You Manage AP From Anywhere

Key takeaways

• Record every bill as it arrives, so nothing slips past its due date.
• Schedule payments in advance to protect cash flow and pay vendors on time.
• Approve payments from any device and set thresholds so your team can help.
• Go digital to cut the hidden costs and hours that manual accounts payable adds up to.

What is accounts payable management?

Accounts payable management is how a business tracks, approves, and pays what it owes vendors on time. Done well, it protects cash flow and vendor relationships.

Handled poorly, it leads to late fees, strained suppliers, and hours lost to manual work.

How to manage accounts payable step by step

Managing AP well comes down to a simple, repeatable process:

1. Record each bill as you receive it.
2. Approve payments against the goods or services delivered.
3. Schedule payments to match your terms and cash flow.
4. Pay digitally and keep a clear record.

Digital features to manage AP from anywhere

Work from any device. Most digital AP tools, like Melio, run wherever you have internet:

• Laptop
• Mobile phone
• Tablet

With an online bill pay tool, you can manage all your payments in advance in a single sitting. Just schedule them to go out at the right time. This way, you never have to worry about missing a payment again. You can always review your upcoming payments and make adjustments later.

We believe you should be able to choose how you pay. It makes sense for your business to pay with an ACH bank transfer or a credit card. Your vendor may prefer to get their payments through paper checks. The good news is that a digital accounts payable solution lets each party choose what’s best without affecting the other.

In other words, you can pay whichever way you choose. If your vendor still wants a check, we’ll just mail them one. This saves you the trouble, the time, and the hidden costs of doing it manually, which really add up. Processing a single paper check costs about $4 on average once labor, bank fees, printing, and postage are included.

One of the most challenging parts of maintaining cash flow health is keeping track of every payment. With a digital accounts payable tool, you can view all your transactions and upcoming bills in one place.

When you know exactly which payments are done or scheduled, you’re never caught off guard. Surprise payments won’t drain your cash reserves, and overdue bills won’t hurt your vendor relationships.

If you’ve ever sat down to manually sign a pile of checks, there’s one thing you know for sure. You never want to do that again.

Approve on the go. Review pending payments from your inbox and set approval thresholds. Small expenses can then move without you, so your team can help.

Remember the days when you used to text vendors just to say you sent a check? That check often took several days or weeks to arrive. Well, those days are finally over. With a digital payment tool, we notify your vendor as soon as you schedule a payment. They can then track it on their own.

They get the peace of mind that comes from knowing the money is on its way. You save time on checking up and updating them.

You may import goods, employ sales agents in other markets, ship merchandise across borders, or hire freelancers to help. There’s a good chance some of your vendors aren’t based in the U.S. Until recently, paying them could be difficult, expensive, or both.

Some digital business-to-business (B2B) payment tools, including Melio, let you pay international vendors for a flat $20 fee per transaction. That’s often well below the cost of international wires or bank transfers. This saves you money and time. You no longer have to switch platforms, and you can pay every bill, international and domestic, in one seamless process.

The ease and convenience of digital AP are just a few clicks away

The first thing that comes to mind when adopting a new tool is what a nuisance it’ll be. You’re probably wondering how long onboarding will take if you switch to a digital accounts payable solution.

Good news: tools like Melio take only a few minutes to set up, with no training or special equipment needed. If you know how to use a smartphone or an internet browser, you already know everything you need to.

To conclude, you can start using Melio right away. So, shall we get started?

Accounts payable FAQs