#accounts-payable
Manage vendor payments, track bills, and optimize cash outflow
The AR control balance must equal every customer balance added up — when it doesn't, a posting went to the wrong place. How the tie-out works.
Paying a 2/10 net 30 invoice on day 30 instead of day 10 costs 2% for 20 days of float — about a 36% annualized rate. Take the discount.
Sales, purchases, cash receipts, and cash disbursements journals group repeating transactions so you post monthly totals, not hundreds of entries.
The gross method books purchases at full invoice price; the net method books them minus the discount and flags misses as Purchase Discounts Lost expense.
An invoice requests payment, a receipt proves it, and a bill is the buyer's name for the invoice — each books to a different account.
Remittance advice tells your supplier which invoices a payment covers — invoice numbers, discounts, and credits included — so cash applies cleanly.
Single-use virtual card numbers lock each AP payment to one vendor and one amount, cutting check fraud while earning rebates of about 0.5% on spend.
D&B Paydex grades payment speed 1–100, Experian forecasts delinquency risk, and FICO SBSS gates SBA loans at 155 — build all three from zero.
When an online seller charges no sales tax, you owe use tax to your state at your local rate. Here is how to self-accrue it each month.
Manual invoice processing costs $9.84 on average versus $2.65 best-in-class — automate intake, matching, approvals and payments to capture the gap.
A 2/10 net 30 discount is a 36% annualized return — pay inside the window, hold the rest until due, and track DPO monthly.
Cash-to-accrual switches run through IRS Form 3115: positive Section 481(a) catch-ups spread over four years, so cutoff discipline sets the bill.
