Automating payments is one of the more straightforward parts of payables to automate, because grouping approved invoices into runs and executing transfers is mechanical and repetitive. Two things inside that process must not be automated, and organisations that automate them anyway usually discover why through an expensive incident rather than through an audit.
Safe to automate
Selecting approved invoices due within a window, grouping them by supplier, producing the payment file, recording payments back against invoices, and sending remittance advices. All of it is rule-driven and it removes a genuinely tedious manual task, along with the transcription errors that come with rekeying account details into a banking portal.
Keep manual: release by a second person
Whoever prepared a payment run should not be the only person able to release it. This is one of the oldest controls in finance and it remains effective precisely because it is simple. Automation should enforce it rather than remove it, and cover arrangements during absence deserve as much thought as the rule itself.
Keep manual: bank detail verification
A change to where a supplier's money goes should be verified using contact details you already hold, by somebody other than whoever received the request, and recorded. No automation substitutes for that call, and the request will always look convincing, because the people who send them are practised at making them look convincing.
Questions people ask about automate payments
Can we automate payment approval too?
Approval of the invoice, no. Release of a run below a threshold, some organisations do, but it removes the second pair of eyes exactly where money leaves.
How often should runs happen?
Weekly suits most organisations. Choose deliberately and tell suppliers, since most chasing is a supplier trying to find out when.
What about paying by card?
It bypasses the payment controls entirely, which is convenient and worth reconciling deliberately rather than leaving unexamined.