An AP process with real approvals, accurate timing, and a clear view of what's coming due, so cash decisions rest on current numbers.
Accounts payable looks simple until it isn't. Bills arrive by email, mail, and text. Someone approves them, or doesn't. Payments go out early because nobody's tracking terms, or late because an invoice sat in an inbox. Meanwhile the owner has no clear picture of what's actually owed.
Managed AP fixes the process, not just the data entry. Bills get captured, coded, routed for approval, and scheduled deliberately. Baum's Accounting Services was built on 18 years of controller and CFO work, and runs these processes the same deliberate way for growing companies around Lexington. What growing Kentucky companies get is a payables function that protects cash and keeps vendor relationships intact.
The usual failure is that AP grew by accident. It worked when the owner opened the mail and wrote checks. Then volume tripled, invoices started arriving in four different places, and nobody owns the process. Approvals happen verbally or not at all. Terms get ignored, so bills get paid the day they arrive whether they're due in ten days or forty-five. Duplicate payments slip through because two people paid the same invoice from two different copies. Vendor statements go unreviewed, so credits sit unused.
It starts with a single intake point. Every invoice lands in one place, digitally, so nothing lives in someone's inbox. Bills get entered with correct coding and correct dates, which is what makes the aging report meaningful. Approval routing gets defined by dollar threshold and department so the right person signs off and there's a record of it. Payment runs happen on a set schedule rather than whenever someone remembers, and each run gets approved before funds move.
Once payables are organized, timing becomes something you control instead of something that happens to you. If a vendor offers a discount for early payment, that's real money and worth taking when cash allows. If terms are net 45, paying on day 12 hands the vendor free financing. A clean aging report lets you see the next 30 days of outgoing cash and sequence payments around what's coming in. That's the difference between managing cash and reacting to it, and it matters most in the businesses where margins are tight and timing is everything.
A lot of fraud in small and midsize companies runs through payables, often via fake vendors or altered invoices. The standard protection is separating who enters bills, who approves them, and who releases payment. Companies with a two-person office assume they can't do this. They can, partly, by bringing in an outside party for one of those roles. When AP entry and coding sit with an outside firm and approval and payment release stay with ownership, you get meaningful separation without adding headcount.
That's set by scope and by how much control you want to keep. A common arrangement is that bills get entered, coded, and prepared for payment while final approval and the release of funds stay with the owner. Other clients want more handled. The right split gets decided during onboarding.
Yes. Duplicate and inactive vendors get merged and archived, and W-9 information gets collected and recorded so 1099 reporting isn't a January fire drill. Getting vendor records right also improves coding accuracy, since consistent vendors make consistent coding much easier to maintain.
First step is an accurate aging report, which many companies in this spot don't have. Once you can see what's genuinely owed and to whom, you can prioritize by relationship, urgency, and available cash. Vendors are usually far more workable when the conversation is specific and proactive.
Other work in this area that tends to come up in the same conversation.
Invoices out promptly, payments applied correctly, aging reviewed regularly. Slow-paying customers get spotted while something can still be done.
Read moreProfit and loss, balance sheet, and cash flow statements prepared from closed books, formatted the way lenders and partners expect to see them.
Read moreThe account structure decides what your reports can tell you later. Yours gets built around your industry and the decisions you make.
Read moreBook a consultation and we will walk through the work, the timing, and who does what.
Book a Consultation
