Every organization needs a skilled accounts payable (AP) department to ensure smooth financial operations. But what does it take to build an effective accounts payable team?
With competition for finance professionals increasing, attracting and retaining top finance talent is a significant challenge. However, organizations that focus on improving workflow efficiency and offering career development opportunities are well-positioned to assemble high-performing AP departments. Providing the right training and technology—like an AP automation solution—will position your accounts payable team for long-term success and job satisfaction.
Key takeaways
- An effective accounts payable team supports strong financial operations by managing payments and optimizing cash flow.
- CFOs can attract and retain top AP talent by focusing on career growth opportunities and digital transformation to streamline operations.
- An AP automation solution can enhance the AP team’s efficiency and empower team members to focus on strategic projects and upskill in other areas that add value to the organization.
The responsibilities of accounts payable
The accounts payable team has many responsibilities, including:
- Processing payments
- Cash flow management
- Analytics
Let’s take a closer look at the key functions of accounts payable below.
Processing payments
The accounts payable team oversees the entire AP workflow. This includes verifying invoices, organizing approvals, authorizing payments, and executing secure transactions. They also manage various payment methods to align with vendor preferences. Organizations depend on their AP team to process payments accurately and efficiently while maintaining accounts payable compliance.
Cash flow management
The accounts payable team plays a crucial role in cash flow management. By ensuring payments are scheduled strategically and processed on time, AP professionals help manage outgoing cash flow to avoid late fees from overdue payments. Additionally, they can negotiate payment terms—like extended payment deadlines and early-payment discounts—to free up additional working capital for operational needs or unexpected expenses.
Analytics
Leveraging AP reporting and analytics can help an accounts payable team identify payment trends and improve decision-making. Tracking metrics like days payable outstanding (DPO) helps businesses optimize cash flow while maintaining timely vendor payments.
Many AP teams rely on an AP automation solution to streamline the reporting process and quickly gain actionable insights. Platforms that provide real-time financial data enhance visibility to improve cash flow forecasting.
Why the accounts payable department matters
Don’t underestimate the impact of the AP department. An efficient accounts payable team can streamline operations and contribute to the bottom line. These contributions include:
- Enhance strategic vendor relationships
- Build trust with shareholders
- Deliver strategic insights to aid controllers and CFOs
- Combat fraud
Enhance vendor relationships
According to MineralTree’s 9th Annual State of AP Report, payment delays are a major frustration for vendors in the customer payment process. Late payments from customers (59%) were vendors’ top pain point, followed by the challenge of following up on invoice or payment status (25%).
The accounts payable team helps maintain vendor relationships by ensuring payments are accurate and on time. A strong payment history can help when negotiating payment terms and solidify lasting partnerships between vendors and your business.
Build trust with shareholders
The accounting talent shortage has ripple effects, including delays and inaccuracies in financial reporting. In 2025, over 720 companies reported errors in their earnings reports. These discrepancies can erode shareholder confidence and raise concerns about an organization’s financial stability.
By providing key accounts payable metrics, the accounts payable team can offer transparency into the organization’s financial health to maintain shareholder trust.
Deliver strategic insights
AP teams contribute to an organization’s bottom line by using analytics to identify payment trends and opportunities to improve cash flow.
For example, Quartzy, a leading distributor of life sciences products, earned $100,000 in cash-back rebates by optimizing their payment mix to use a virtual card payment option rather than a corporate credit card.
Organizations risk leaving money on the table without an effective accounts payable team to implement and manage optimization strategies.
Combat fraud
Since they execute payments, accounts payable teams are at high risk for BEC emails. For this reason, an effective AP team with strong internal controls is important to protect organizations.
The state of hiring finance professionals today
If you find hiring finance professionals challenging, you’re not alone. Forty-three percent of managers report difficulties recruiting for accounts payable, accounts receivable, and bookkeeping roles.
As fewer people study accounting or finance, the talent shortage of accounting staff will likely worsen. And with 74% of finance professionals saying they’ve been approached for a job multiple times in the past year, the talent competition is intense.
According to the State of AP Report, staff turnover (20%) and recruitment (14%) are among the top challenges to maintaining high team performance for accounts payable teams. As a result, CFOs need to understand how to recruit and retain finance talent to ensure their businesses continue to operate smoothly. CFOs must also understand the key challenges that these professionals face in order to foster a supportive working environment.
Challenges for the AP team
The accounts payable team encounters challenges that can hinder efficiency and accuracy, especially when teams are understaffed. These include:
- Manual work
- Human error
- Fraud
Manual work
Many accounts payable teams are overwhelmed by repetitive manual tasks, such as invoice entry, matching, and approvals. Without automation, these processes slow down workflows and reduce productivity and efficiency. These challenges strain understaffed teams and also harm organizations’ ability to attract and retain top finance talent.
Human error
The manual AP process can lead to data entry errors, duplicate payments, or incorrect vendor information. These errors can result in wasted resources and late payments that strain vendor relationships, adding to the workload of already stretched teams.
Fraud
As fraudsters evolve their tactics, AP departments are at risk of schemes like vendor fraud, check tampering, and business email compromise. Manual payment processes lack safeguards to mitigate these threats, leaving organizations more vulnerable to preventable errors and fraud attempts. Understaffed and overburdened teams are more prone to missing red flags, postponing essential fraud prevention actions, or making mistakes that increase the organization’s exposure to risk.
Building a strong AP team: 6 tips for employers
A clear plan to build an effective accounts payable team can help CFOs attract and retain finance talent. Below are six key tips for strengthening your AP department:
- Build compelling career paths for your team
- Offer flexibility
- Upskill the current workforce
- Fight fraud through automation
- Leverage analytics
- Embrace digital transformation
1. Build compelling career paths for your team
Employees who see pathways for professional growth are more likely to stay engaged. By developing clear career paths, you can improve retention while attracting new talent to your accounts payable team.
For instance, training team members to focus on data analysis or vendor relations allows them to build specialized skills. Opportunities to tackle more strategic roles can help employees envision a long-term career at the company while strengthening your team’s overall effectiveness.
2. Offer flexibility
Return-to-office policies can cause friction between employers and employees as more employees have grown accustomed to the benefits of remote work. Finance professionals increasingly want flexibility with in-office policies, with 40% preferring a fully remote job and 33% preferring hybrid work.
Both current and prospective employees see flexible work policies as a significant benefit. Additionally, offering hybrid and remote work allows CFOs to hire the best talent since they can focus on candidate skills rather than proximity to the office.
3. Upskill the current workforce
As businesses increasingly rely on finance teams for strategic decision-making, upskilling the workforce is essential. Offering targeted training in areas like data modeling or analysis equips employees to interpret new data streams and helps future-proof your accounts payable team.
Upskilling also contributes to employee satisfaction, keeping talent engaged and motivated. Since 50% of finance professionals leave their roles for more interesting work, training and development can improve retention while meeting evolving business needs.
AP automation enables upskilling by saving hours through reduced manual effort and streamlined processes, enabling finance teams to focus on higher-value tasks. These hours can be invested into upskilling the workforce and more time to flex these new skills on special projects. One healthcare practice management firm used the time savings from automation and analytics to empower a “special projects” team to identify additional cost savings, including $150,000 in overpaid rent payments that were ultimately credited back. Upskilling the workforce can have a direct impact on the bottom line.
4. Fight fraud through automation
Fraud remains a top concern in accounts payable. AP teams face internal and external threats, such as business email compromise and vendor fraud.
AP automation lessens the risk of fraud by centralizing accounts payable activity and providing visibility into every payment. Automation also makes switching to electronic payment methods easier and offers controls like dual-factor authentication for added security. With better monitoring and streamlined processes, it’s no surprise that 31% of respondents in the State of AP report cite greater fraud protection as a key benefit of AP automation.
These safeguards reduce the stress of managing fraud risk for AP teams, creating a more positive work environment.
5. Leverage analytics
AP analytics provide insights for the accounts payable teams to operate more efficiently and add more value to the business, which improves job satisfaction.
For example, teams can better understand cash flow and manage vendor relationships by tracking key accounts payable metrics. AP automation solutions also eliminate manual reporting, allowing AP teams to extract data quickly, forecast more accurately, and make a greater impact on the organization’s financial health.
6. Embrace digital transformation
Digital transformation is reshaping the accounts payable function, helping AP teams move beyond time-consuming manual tasks. Organizations can improve efficiency and enhance visibility into payment processes by automating the AP workflow.
The State of AP report found that AP was the top automation priority in the back office for the fourth year. AP automation solutions streamline everything from invoice capture to payments so teams can scale operations without increasing headcount. Team members also benefit from less repetitive workloads, empowering them to focus on more strategic, fulfilling tasks.
Final thoughts
Building an effective accounts payable team requires a mix of employee development and advanced technology. MineralTree’s end-to-end AP automation solution helps teams achieve these goals by streamlining workflows and enhancing visibility across the payment process.
With features like real-time analytics and fraud prevention controls, MineralTree empowers AP teams to focus on meaningful initiatives that drive business results.
Schedule a demo today to see how MineralTree can transform your accounts payable function.
FAQs on building an effective accounts payable team
Tl;dr? If you’re short on time, the frequently asked questions below provide a quick snapshot of what you need to know about building your accounts payable team.
1. How should CFOs structure the accounts payable team?
CFOs should centralize the accounts payable processes by embracing automation to streamline workflows and reduce manual tasks. Focusing on career development and implementing hybrid work models can also help improve retention and engagement for accounts payable teams.
2. What is the role of accounts payable?
Accounts payable is responsible for processing invoices and payments accurately and on time. This function helps control expenses by verifying invoices, ensuring compliance, and maintaining timely vendor payments to support strong financial operations.
