Accounts Payable Process Template
Four documents and four sheets that hold every invoice until the PO and receipt agree, then rank the run by discount.
Free download · No account needed
An invoice is payable when three documents agree. The purchase order says what was ordered and at what price, the receipt says what arrived, and the invoice says what is being billed. Approval is not one of the three. A signature answers whether the company wanted the spend. Whether the goods came at the price agreed is a different question, and routing a variance to an approver turns a control into a formality.
On the illustrative run in the sheets, 24 invoices came in for 506,580.00 and the match held five for 82,400.00. Two of those five are real findings: an invoice billed 4,180.00 above the contract price list, and 12,600.00 of goods the requester says never arrived. The 265,000.00 run budget then bought 11 invoices and captured 4,811.80 of discount. Ordered by due date instead, the same money bought 13 invoices and captured 2,857.10, so the sequencing alone was worth 1,954.70 in one week.
Federal procurement runs the same control and says so: invoice payments must be supported by a receiving report, and taking a prompt payment discount improperly triggers an interest penalty. The aging carries the sharpest number here. Payables stand at 565,130.00, and every dollar past 30 days is a match exception rather than a cash decision. Which invoices go out on a short day is a different question, answered in the daily cash position pack, which puts a rail cutoff on each one.
What's in the pack
Three-way Match Status sheet
Thirty invoices with exactly one state each, this cycle's alongside everything carried forward, with days open on the stale ones. Only matched invoices and named exemptions are marked payable.
AP Aging sheet
By vendor and by bucket, with a second summary line showing how much of each bucket is held by the match. That split separates a cash problem from an exception problem, and they have different fixes.
Payment Run Log
The run ranked by annualised discount cost, with cash committed, discount captured, discount as a share of cash, the budget left unspent, and a due-date-ordered contrast on the same money.
Vendor Terms Register
Terms with the annualised rate stored beside them, payment method, tax form status with a date, the date terms were last confirmed, a named dispute contact, and any open issue.
AP Procedure
The fixed week with times on it, the six match states, the quantity and price tolerances, and the exemption categories that make a strict no-PO rule livable.
Three-way Match Exceptions
What each of the five states actually needs, who owns the fix, and the three escalations by age. A quantity variance goes to the yard before it goes to the vendor.
Discount Economics
The formula with the two places people get it wrong, the six common terms as annualised rates, and how to report an expired discount as a capture rate rather than burying it.
Vendor Onboarding Note
The six things that must exist before a first payment, including the out-of-band verification call on remittance details that is the entire control against payment redirection.
How to use it
- 1
Take it blank, or seeded
Download the empty Word and CSV files with no signup, or open the pack in River and hand it this cycle's invoices, purchase orders and receiving records.
- 2
Match before anyone approves anything
One state per invoice. A price variance goes back to the vendor with the PO line quoted. A no-PO invoice goes to the requester with one question: who ordered this, and against what.
- 3
Age the exceptions, not just the invoices
Carry every unresolved hold forward with its days open, then split the aging by held share. An exception open sixty days has usually stopped being chased and started being tolerated.
- 4
Sequence, size, then release
Rank the payable set on annualised discount cost, pay down the list until the budget is gone, and leave the remainder unspent rather than part-paying to fill it.
Frequently asked questions
Is this template free?
Yes. Four Word documents and four CSV sheets download with no signup and no card. Edit with AI is the optional path for anyone who would rather hand River a folder of invoice PDFs than key them. The rest of the template library works the same way.
What format are the downloaded files?
Four Word documents and four CSV sheets in one zip, opening in Word or Google Docs and Excel or Sheets. Start with the Vendor Terms Register: it stores the annualised cost of forgoing each discount beside the terms themselves, which is the column the payment run gets sorted on.
What if we do not raise purchase orders?
Then the match cannot run and every invoice lands in the no-PO state, which is honest but not useful. The workable interim is the terms register and the run sequencing, which need only the invoices and the terms, plus a decision on which categories will always be exempt.
Why not just pay the oldest invoices first?
Because age says nothing about the return. Forgoing a 2/10 net 30 discount costs 37.2 per cent annualised and forgoing 1/15 net 45 costs 12.3 per cent, so the same cash buys very different value. On the worked run the ordering alone was worth 1,954.70.
Can I approve my way past a match exception?
You can, and it is the specific move that lets a phantom invoice through. Approval answers whether the company wanted the spend. It does not answer whether the goods arrived at the price agreed, which is why a no-receipt invoice goes to the requester rather than to an approver.
How does this fit with forecasting and daily cash?
It supplies the outflow side. The 13-week cash forecast pack places these runs across a quarter, and the receivables that fund them are worked in the AR collections pack. This pack decides what is payable and in what order.
What does Edit with AI actually do?
A free River account is created and this pack installs as a private workspace. The agent starts ready for your invoices, purchase orders and receiving records, assigns a match state to each invoice, and ranks the payable set against your cash figure. It fills nothing until you send something.
Pay what matched, in the order that pays
Download the blank pack as Word and CSV files, or open it in River and let the agent match this cycle's invoices and rank the run against your cash.
Edit with AI