Most advice on processing invoices concentrates on speed, and the failure that actually damages a supplier relationship is an invoice that went missing rather than one that went slowly. Four habits prevent it, none of them requires software, and together they turn a payables queue from something people worry about into something they can see.
One arrival point
Every invoice enters through a channel somebody monitors, with the date recorded. Invoices sent to individuals are invisible until forwarded, and by then payment terms have been running. Telling suppliers one address and redirecting what arrives elsewhere takes a quarter of polite persistence and closes the biggest leak permanently.
One record and one status
Each invoice on a record with a status from a short fixed list. Free-text statuses drift into variants that cannot be counted; a fixed list means the queue can be counted and reported. This is what makes it possible to notice that something has stopped moving, which is how invoices stop going missing.
An owner and an age on anything stuck
Every invoice not on the clean path needs a named owner and a visible age. Shared queues produce items everybody can see and nobody progresses. Reviewing the oldest few items weekly, with a name against each, is the entire management routine and it takes minutes.
Questions people ask about how to process invoices
What if we are too small for a system?
These four habits work on a spreadsheet plus a shared mailbox. The habits matter more than the tooling at small volumes.
How do we know if invoices are being missed?
Reconcile supplier statements for your largest suppliers. It reveals invoices they raised that you never recorded.
What is the most common cause of a lost invoice?
Arrival at an individual's inbox rather than a monitored address, by a wide margin.