Just realized my vendor invoice process had a 3-day delay built in

I was digging into why our monthly close always felt rushed and noticed that our AP team was holding invoices for 3 days before entering them. Turns out it was a habit from when the old manager wanted to double-check everything, but now it just means we miss early payment discounts. I checked last month's numbers and we lost about $450 in discounts because of that delay. We're testing a same-day entry system now, has anyone else dealt with hidden bottlenecks like this in their payables workflow?

2 comments

2 Comments

joseph_martinez3527d ago

Turned out to be a habit from when the old manager wanted to double check everything" - classic. We had something similar where the AP clerk was manually printing every invoice and stamping it "received" because the person before her did it. Cost us maybe $600 a month in missed discounts before we killed that process. The 3 day delay is basically a hidden tax.

gray_smith6726d ago

Three days isn't really that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. Most vendors give you 30 days anyway, so a small delay doesn't kill you unless you're chasing early payment discounts on everything. Plus, that double check habit probably caught a few errors over the years that saved you way more than $600 a month. Manual processes have a bad reputation but they force people to actually look at what they're paying. Automation just speeds up mistakes sometimes. Not every old habit is worthless, sometimes they exist because someone got burned before.