Process family
Accounts payable: eight templates from invoice intake to the payment run
Eight accounts payable flowcharts: the full AP cycle, invoice approval, three-way matching, payment approval, supplier setup and bank-detail changes, and the two expense claim routes that end in the same payment run.
Accounts payable is the discipline that turns a received supplier invoice into an authorized, posted and reconciled payment without paying twice, paying the wrong account or paying for something never received. This family groups the templates that share it: invoice controls, payment release, the supplier master-data controls that protect it, and the two employee expense routes that end in the same payment run. It is a group, not a sequence.
These eight have no single order; they are the controls an AP team operates side by side. The full AP cycle is the spine, from invoice intake across every channel to statement reconciliation and month-end accruals. Inside it, the invoice approval flowchart handles capture, the duplicate check, cost center coding and approval by value, and three-way matching compares the invoice against the purchase order and the recorded receipt before it can be posted. Payment approval then sits between the AP payment proposal and the bank: supplier bank verification, delegated approval, dual release, posting.
AP exists to stop three failures: a duplicate invoice arriving by email and post, an invoice posted against a receipt never made, and the costly one, a payment redirected to a fraudster after a plausible bank-detail change. Supplier setup puts due diligence, a duplicate check and independent bank verification before activation; supplier bank detail change treats every change as high risk: a callback to a known contact, maker-checker approval, a payment hold until it clears. Expense approval and reimbursement are the employee route into the same run: no order to match, a receipt only the claimant holds, and payroll or the AP run at the end.
Upstream, the invoice exists because a requisition and an order did; the purchasing half of the cycle is procure-to-pay. Downstream, the accruals, the AP sub-ledger cut-off and the bank reconciliation are steps in the financial close. Who may approve which value, and whether the spend should have been committed in the first place, is decided under spend governance.
Templates in this family
- Accounts payable process flowchart (full AP cycle) — Accounts payable process flowchart for the whole AP cycle: invoice intake, supplier master data, duplicate and PO checks, payment runs and month-end accruals.
- Invoice approval process flowchart — A swimlane invoice approval process template: capture, duplicate check, three-way PO match, coding, approval by value, supplier queries, posting and payment.
- Three-way matching process flowchart — Three-way matching process flowchart for comparing a supplier invoice, purchase order and goods or service receipt, with tolerance controls and discrepancy handling.
- Payment approval process flowchart — Payment approval process flowchart for payment-proposal preparation, supplier-bank verification, delegated approval, dual bank release, posting and reconciliation.
- Supplier setup process flowchart — Supplier setup process flowchart for business justification, due diligence, duplicate checks, independent bank-detail verification and maker-checker supplier activation.
- Supplier bank detail change process flowchart — Supplier bank detail change process flowchart for authenticated requests, independent callback verification, maker-checker approval, payment holds and fraud escalation.
- Expense approval process flowchart — A swimlane expense approval process template: receipt and policy check, line manager approval, value thresholds, duplicate check, VAT coding and payment.
- Expense reimbursement process flowchart (claim to payout) — Expense reimbursement process flowchart template: travel pre-approval, automated policy check, manager approval, finance audit sample, payroll or AP payout, corporate card reconciliation and VAT recovery.
Used in these industries
Related guides
- How to create a process flowchart — How to create a process flowchart: fix the trigger and the end state, write one action per box, turn every 'if' into a labelled decision, and close every branch. With a worked example you can step through.
- How to create an invoice approval workflow — How to build an invoice approval workflow around the three-way match: the ways three documents disagree, the different row each correction re-enters at, and lanes that keep duties apart.
- How to map an approval process — How to map an approval process so the map is worth opening: where the authority limit sits, what a refusal actually does to the request, and who decides when the approver is away.