By managing vendor relationships, maintaining cash flow and providing accurate financial reporting, Accounts Payable plays a central role in keeping businesses running smoothly. That’s why AP departments need a good mix of precision, speed and strong internal controls.
As businesses scale, achieving this balance becomes more challenging. Growth often brings added complexity across departments and a greater burden from evolving regulatory requirements.
Today, manual processes and siloed efforts just won’t cut it for enterprise Finance operations. The pressure is on to automate routine Accounts Payable tasks, tighten compliance and gain real-time visibility, all while keeping costs under control and errors to a minimum.
That’s why choosing the right AP software is more than a technology decision - it’s a strategic one. AP teams need to find the right mix of ERPs, workflow tools and bolt-ons to keep operations running smoothly. Inadequate systems and processes:
The right software empowers Finance teams to operate proactively, with confidence.
But the technology landscape is crowded. Every vendor promises faster processing, smarter automation and better insights. So, how do you figure out what actually matters when it's time to make a purchase?
In this article, we've broken down the key features and functionalities of your next AP software solution. Whether you’re replacing a clunky legacy tool or investing for the first time, these are the capabilities that will help your team work more efficiently, stay compliant and take control of your financial operations.
Fraudulent or duplicate payments can cost companies millions. In fact, invoice fraud alone results in an average annual loss of $280,000 per mid-market business. According to Medius, the average per-incident monetary loss is $133,000 in the U.S. and £104,000 in the UK. These figures underscore the significant financial impact of fraud on businesses.
Your Accounts Payable solution should proactively detect irregularities and give you preventative controls to protect against both internal and external threats. Xelix uses the latest developments in AI and rules-based fraud detection algorithms to identify suspicious behaviour across your transactional data and shared AP mailboxes and informs your finance team to investigate potential issues before it's too late.
Duplicate invoice detection ensures that overpayments are avoided, and real-time anomaly detection helps your team respond to potential issues immediately, before the money has left your business. You can also customise alerts for large, late or suspicious transactions to further enhance the system's ability to flag and address irregularities promptly.
Implementing these measures is crucial for safeguarding your businesses’ financial assets and maintaining trust with suppliers and stakeholders. By proactively addressing fraud risks, you can mitigate potential losses and ensure the integrity of your Accounts Payable processes.
At the heart of any powerful AP automation tool is advanced invoice processing. The best software leverages deep learning-based OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and AI-driven data extraction to accurately capture invoice details automatically. This relieves your team from tedious manual data entry and reduces the risk of errors using automated invoice processing.
Invoice automation matches invoices with purchase orders and receipts, spotting discrepancies early and ensuring approvals stay on track. When exceptions do occur, the software should be able to route them to the right person for speedy resolution.
Root cause analysis is the key to proper invoice management. By highlighting recurring issues, such as frequent mismatches or approval delays, your Accounts Payable team learn from the insights, resulting in process improvement and upskilling at the same time.
With the right tools, invoice automation does more than just speed up approvals. It enhances supplier relationships, supports timely payments and gives your Accounts Payable team greater control over the entire invoice lifecycle.
For growing and enterprise-level organisations, workflow automation needs to go beyond the basics.
Leading AP automation tools offer fully customisable, multi-level approval workflows that mirror the complexity of a modern AP process. Features like delegation, escalation paths and threshold-based rules ensure that approvals continue without delay, even when invoices require higher-level sign-off or approvers are unavailable.
Strong workflow automation begins with accurate data capture, ensuring that the correct invoice data enters the system from the start. This prevents errors from slipping into approval chains and supports faster, more reliable decision-making throughout the process.
Security and compliance need to be high on the list of key considerations. Role-based access control ensures that only the right people see sensitive information, while full audit trails track every transaction from entry to payment. This level of oversight helps Finance leaders stay compliant and in control.
By streamlining approvals and enhancing visibility, enterprise-grade workflow automation helps:
Like any other software implementation, AP software should integrate smoothly with your existing ERP and other financial systems. Look for native integrations or API-based connectors with popular systems like SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics and more. These integrations allow for data to flow between systems, in turn reducing the risk of duplicate entries, fraud attempts and payment errors.
Additionally, support for webhooks, a form of real-time data transfer, and middleware ensures that the AP system can communicate effectively with other platforms, enhancing overall efficiency.
This integration minimises manual data entry, reduces the likelihood of human error and provides a single view of financial operations. By connecting your AP automation software with your ERP and other tools, you enhance accuracy, improve decision-making and save valuable time.
As Finance teams face growing volumes and rising expectations, businesses looking to elevate their Accounts Payable automation need advanced capabilities that go beyond basic processing. The right solution should automate supplier onboarding, including W-9/W-8 form collection, ensuring compliance and reducing manual effort. A self-service portal allows vendors to submit invoices, check payment statuses and track updates independently, streamlining the payable workflow and cutting down on administrative workload.
For most companies, managing master data is a reactive and manual process and ownership tends to fall in the cracks between finance and procurement. Getting a tool that monitors your master vendor data regularly and keeps it up to date will significantly reduce the risk of payment errors and fraudulent activity.
Digital document management and archiving keep all supplier documents organised and easily accessible. Built-in risk scoring and duplicate vendor checks help catch errors and prevent fraud before they cause problems.
These smart features enhance transparency and control, strengthen supplier relationships and reduce the time spent on manual queries. By allowing vendors to manage their own information, the software creates a smoother, more empowering experience for them. It also frees up your AP team to focus on strategic tasks that drive stronger partnerships and more efficient payment cycles.
It’s not groundbreaking, but your Accounts Payable solutions should include features that maintain strong controls and ensure regulatory compliance. A full audit trail records every action, from approvals to payments, providing clear visibility for audits and simplifying internal tracking. This enhances auditability and strengthens internal controls.
The system should help you stay compliant with regulations like SOx, GDPR, HIPAA and FPC (if applicable). Custom policy enforcement and approval logic allow you to align the system with internal guidelines, reducing the risk of non-compliance in your AP process.
User and role management with least-privilege access minimises the risk of unauthorised actions, while risk ratings help prioritise tasks for faster resolution.
Reporting tools make it easy to generate compliance reports, which are essential for both internal monitoring and audits. Real-time analysis allows for continuous evaluation and ensures that controls are effective.
These features are critical for simplifying audits, reinforcing internal controls and providing peace of mind that your Accounts Payable process remains compliant and secure, with consideration for broader financial operations like Accounts Receivable.
AI and machine learning are no longer futuristic concepts. Rather, they're essential components of modern AP software that drive automation, intelligence and scalability.
Managing thousands of transactions means AP teams are constantly exposed to risks like duplicate invoices, posting errors, overpayments and fraud, all of which can quietly drain company spend. Xelix uses AI to analyse over 400 data points per invoice, flagging anomalies such as currency mismatches, misapplied tax and suspicious activity before the pay run. It helps teams prevent costly errors and focus only on genuine risks, saving businesses millions and reinforcing control across the entire AP process.
Another powerful feature is predictive payment scheduling, which uses historical data and Machine Learning to anticipate payment due dates, forecast cash flow and recommend optimal payment timings. This not only improves liquidity management but also enables strategic use of early payment discounts.
Agentic AI is emerging as a key differentiator. It can assist with writing procurement and payment policies, powering AI chatbots for employee or vendor queries and automating routine helpdesk tasks. This creates consistency in vendor communication and improves team morale as AP staff no longer fight through shared mailboxes.
Finally, Large Language Models embedded in modern AP platforms learn from transaction patterns and user behaviour over time. This means the system becomes smarter by reducing exceptions, flagging anomalies earlier and improving processing accuracy as it evolves and learns from your data.
AP analytics and real-time reporting should be one of the top priorities in any finance-based solution, and AP is no exception.
Dashboards tailored to specific roles such as CFOs, Controllers and AP Leads ensure that users see the most relevant data for their responsibilities. With drill-down capabilities, users can analyse spending by supplier, department, category or expense management, enabling more detailed decision-making.
Benchmarking tools help track key performance metrics like cycle time, error rates and cash flow, providing a clear picture of how the Accounts Payable process is performing. Predictive insights for accruals and forecasting allow for better planning and cash flow management.
These features are important because they turn Accounts Payable into a data-rich function, providing valuable insights that help shape business strategy, optimise expense management, meet SLAs and improve overall financial management.
For businesses with an eye for growth, your next solution should be designed to scale on a global level. Look for features like multi-entity, multi-currency and multi-language support to ensure smooth operations across different regions. The system should handle regional tax and compliance requirements, such as VAT and GST, making it easier to stay compliant no matter where you operate.
With local bank integrations and country-specific payment formats, like SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area), BACS (Bankers' Automated Clearing Services) and ACH (Automated Clearing House), you can process payments efficiently across borders. Additionally, enterprise SLAs and uptime guarantees ensure your system remains reliable and available to meet the demands of your global operations.
When speaking with your CFO, placing a strong emphasis on security is crucial. A robust security framework is an essential part of Accounts Payable solution.
Look for certifications like SOC 2, ISO 27001 and others, which demonstrate a commitment to high security standards. With encryption applied both at rest and in transit, your financial and vendor information is protected from unauthorised access.
Role-based access controls and multi-factor authentication (MFA) ensure that only approved users can access critical data, while audit trails provide a clear record of user actions and data changes. Timely breach detection, alerts and incident response protocols are essential for identifying and addressing security threats promptly.
These features are essential for CFOs, as Accounts Payable systems handle highly sensitive financial data and vendor information. Meeting security standards and implementing robust protection mechanisms helps mitigate risks, protect your organisation from data breaches and maintain trust with suppliers while ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements.
This proactive approach to security ensures peace of mind, safeguarding both financial and reputational assets.
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As touched on earlier, one of the key reasons for software projects failing is due to poor user adoption. A modern, intuitive interface reduce training time and encourage better adoption. Additionally, configurable workflows allow the system to align with your internal terminology and structure, ensuring a good fit with existing processes.
Role-based dashboards and to-do lists give users clear visibility into their tasks, helping them stay organised and focused. For enterprise clients, dedicated customer support resources, comprehensive onboarding and attentive and caring Customer Success Managers (CSMs) ensure a smooth transition and ongoing assistance as the system evolves.
Finance Managers and Directors are currently feeling the pressure when it comes to investing time, money and IT resource into new software. With senior leaders expecting immediate ROI and process improvements from the jump, championing new software can feel daunting, even if you believe in its value.
That's why assessing and reporting on painful areas within your current process and engaging in an in-depth discovery stage is so important. Studies indicate that up to 70% of software implementations fail due to factors like inadequate planning, poor user adoption and misaligned expectations.
Having software solutions align with organisational needs and a clear roadmap for implementation and growth can significantly increase the chances of success.
Buying AP software shouldn't just be about ticking boxes for today’s needs either. It’s about choosing a partner for the long haul – a platform that isn’t static and instead continuously improves, evolves with changing regulations and responds to real feedback from real users.
Look for a provider that actively works with its customer base to refine and expand its features, not one that ships updates once a year and disappears.
Ensuring your provider puts AI and automation front and centre is equally as important. Intelligent invoice processing, predictive analytics and smart workflows are now standard.
Finally, while it might look impressive, a slick interface doesn’t guarantee the software does what your team actually needs. Not all vendors offer every key feature, and gaps often don’t show up in demos. Go beyond the highlight reel and ask tough questions about real functionality, scalability and integration.