Most AP best-practice lists are fifteen undifferentiated bullets, half of them borrowed from enterprise finance. Here is which ones earn their place in a small finance team, and which to skip.
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Net 30, EOM, 30 days from statement — the notation is compact and the difference between two of these can be three weeks of credit.
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A note telling a supplier what your payment covers. Optional, frequently skipped, and the cheapest way to stop your own reconciliation queries.
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Batching cuts the cost of switching between tasks, and adds delay in exchange. How to tell which trade you're making.
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A subcontractor invoice under the Construction Industry Scheme carries a deduction that isn't a discount, isn't VAT, and is calculated on only part of the total.
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Reducing your supplier count cuts admin and buys leverage, and costs you resilience. How to tell which suppliers are worth consolidating.
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The fields an invoice legally needs, what changes above the VAT threshold, and what to do when a supplier sends something that isn't one.
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Reverse charge moves the VAT obligation from supplier to buyer. When it applies, how to post it, and the mistake that inflates your VAT return.
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The part of MTD most businesses get wrong isn't filing — it's the requirement that data moves between systems without anyone retyping it.
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Splitting costs across departments, sites or jobs — how to pick a basis that survives being questioned, and when not to bother.
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PVA moves import VAT from a cash payment to a bookkeeping entry. The saving is real, and so is the reconciliation problem it introduces.
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How to read an aged creditors report, and the flaw in the standard one that makes it hide the problem it should reveal.
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Most disputes are resolved badly not because the disagreement is hard, but because the invoice disappears into someone's inbox while it's being sorted out.
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What a PO is for, what belongs on one, and an honest view of when raising them costs more than the control is worth.
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2/10 net 30 looks like a 2% saving. Annualised it is nearer 37%, which changes the decision — provided you can actually process the invoice in ten days.
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Accruals versus cash accounting, why the difference shows up most at month-end, and what it means for how fast you process invoices.
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They mirror each other in theory. In practice one is a data entry problem and the other is a chasing problem, and they fail for opposite reasons.
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The seven stages a supplier invoice passes through, how long each actually takes, and which one is eating your month.
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Duplicate supplier records defeat every control you have. How to structure the list, clean it once, and keep bank details from becoming a fraud route.
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The DPO formula, the inputs people get wrong, and why a rising figure can mean either good cash management or a process falling behind.
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Credit notes are simple until they aren't allocated. The problem is rarely posting them — it's that they sit unapplied while you overpay the invoice they were meant to reduce.
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Retention periods by country, why the longest rule governs, and what counts as an acceptable digital copy.
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The two documents look similar and are treated as interchangeable. HMRC does not treat them that way, and the gap shows up when you reclaim VAT.
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Due date tracking fails for structural reasons, not carelessness. What to track, what to ignore, and how to make the list tell you something.
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A late invoice is a problem you know about. A lost one you find out about from the supplier. Here's where they disappear and how to stop it.
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When to split an invoice, how to pick a basis that survives being questioned, and how to stop doing the same allocation by hand every month.
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Invoice entry resists being sped up, and typing speed isn't the reason. A look at what actually sets the pace — and which fixes work.
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The routes for getting supplier bills into QuickBooks in bulk, how to prepare a file that imports cleanly, and the errors that cause most failures.
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In most AP processes the invoice spends far more time waiting than being worked on. Here's how to find the waiting and remove it.
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Why duplicates arrive, the checks that catch them before payment, and what to do when one has already been paid.
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Most rejections are caused by something missing before the invoice was ever sent for sign-off. The common causes, and what removes them.
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An honest comparison: what OCR is genuinely better at, what it isn't, and why the useful question isn't which one is more accurate.
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Desktop accounting still has real advantages, and the honest comparison isn't the one vendors make. What each is actually better at.
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Account codes, tax rates and tracking categories — how to set them up so most invoices code themselves, and the mistakes that cause rework.
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A model you can run on your own numbers, including the parts that make automation look worse than the sales pitch suggests.
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Two-way and three-way matching explained, with the tolerances that make it workable and an honest view of when it's more control than you need.
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Both handle purchase invoices well. The differences that actually decide it are capture depth, the app ecosystem and where you are.
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A practical sequence for automating purchase invoices, in the order that actually works — and an honest account of what stays manual.
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For bookkeepers and small practices, capacity is the constraint on growth. Most of it is consumed by work that isn't chargeable and isn't skilled.
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What to do with an invoice in euros, francs or dollars — which rate to use, what to record, and the mistakes that cause problems at year end.
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A buyer's checklist for document capture software, including the questions vendors would rather you didn't ask.
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Statements are the document most often entered by mistake and most often ignored when they'd be useful. Both are avoidable.
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Most of the delay in a monthly close isn't the close. It's the purchase invoices that arrived during the month and weren't dealt with.
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Invoice redirection fraud doesn't look like fraud. It looks like a routine email from a supplier you know. Here's the mechanism and the controls that work.
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How to get proper approval on supplier invoices when there are four of you and no procurement department.
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Practical changes that cut the time invoice entry takes, most of which cost nothing and none of which require new software.
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What the European e-invoicing standards actually are, how they differ, and what changes for you when suppliers start sending them.
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A realistic breakdown of the time cost of typing supplier invoices into your accounts — including the parts nobody counts.
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Most invoice capture reads the supplier, the date and the total. If you code purchases to different accounts, that leaves the work exactly where it was.
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Every document capture tool quotes an accuracy figure. None of them tell you which field was wrong — and that's the only part that matters.
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Financial paperwork still gets typed in by hand, one field at a time. We're building the fix: forward any document to your Cribble address and get clean, checkable data back.
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The German mandate is phasing in through 2028, and the first obligation (being able to receive e-invoices) is already live. Here's the timeline in plain language.
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The most under-appreciated document in your paperwork pile is the one that tells you which invoices actually got paid. Matching it by hand is where reconciliation time goes to die.
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