Best practice in accounts payable is a short list, and most of it is free. Every invoice enters through one monitored address with its arrival date recorded. Every invoice has a status, an owner and an age. Exceptions carry their reason and route to whoever can resolve them. Bank detail changes are verified through a channel you already hold. Everything else is refinement.
One door, one date
Every invoice arrives at a monitored address and the date it reached the organisation is recorded, because payment terms run from it. Invoices sent to individuals are invisible until forwarded, and consolidating channels is a quarter of polite persistence that permanently closes the largest leak.
Status, owner and age on everything
A short fixed list of statuses, a named person rather than a team against each item, and an age from when it entered its current state. Those three turn a pile into a queue you can manage, and the weekly routine is chasing the oldest three items by name.
Verify where money goes
A change to a supplier's bank details is verified using contact details you already hold, never those supplied with the request, by somebody other than whoever received it, with the verification recorded. This is the control that prevents the largest single loss in payables.
Reconcile statements for your busiest suppliers
The practice most often skipped and the most reliable way to find invoices a supplier raised that you never received. Prioritise by document count rather than by value, because errors accumulate per document, and treat every difference as a question rather than an instruction to pay something.
Questions people ask about accounts payable best practices
Which practice returns most?
Consolidating arrival channels, because it costs nothing and it stops invoices being invisible until a supplier telephones. After that, routing approvals to named people with automatic cover.
How much of this needs software?
Very little to start. Statuses, owners and ages can live on a spreadsheet at modest volume. Software matters when several people edit the record or when the history needs to be trusted a year later.
What is the most neglected practice?
Supplier statement reconciliation. It is tedious and it is the most reliable way to find invoices a supplier raised that you never received, which are otherwise discovered as an angry call.