Accounts payable are central to the financial health of a company, since paying them in a timely manner helps maintain a good relationship between suppliers. On the other hand, being late in these payments would imply falling into default, risk losing those suppliers and generating a bad image of your company. In addition, it would make it difficult to find new suppliers, which would also harm the activities of your organization.

For this reason, the experts from ETG Capital, provider of creative credit-protection solutions, show you three of the main mistakes made when managing accounts payable, and what to do to avoid them.

1. Overdue payments

It is one of the most expensive and serious problems. If the number of purchases made by your business or trade is considerable, it will be difficult for you to meet the cancellation of all invoices on time, resulting in an increase in initial debt.

Many providers charge fees for late payments. This means that you not only lose money on interest, but you also lose the possibility of timely discounts.

If the problem lies in the lack of liquidity, the specialists from ETG Capital recommend contacting your provider and negotiating an extension. There is also the possibility that inventory control is not adequate and you are ordering more products than you can afford.

If you think that this error is caused by an excessive request for products, the ideal would be to improve inventory control. It is important that you maintain contact with your suppliers and that you communicate the inappropriate situation to them. In case the problem lies in the ignorance of the debts, due to the number of bills to pay, you should think about automating the process.

2. Disappearance of invoices

This frequent error, in some cases, arises as a consequence of invoices not reaching the accounting directly, they tend to be delayed and, ultimately, to be lost. It can also happen because work is not properly organized. It's easy to lose a few bills on a mountain of them. This causes uncertainty regarding the company's liabilities, to the point of not being reflected in the balance sheet.

Electronic invoicing is the perfect solution for this matter. With it, you can have greater control over the company's accounting. There is a simple way to improve inventory, accounting and billing processes: a system that has ERP functionalities to unify all those tools that are necessary for management.

3. Use of manual controls for cost management

Performing manual tasks makes the processes subject to more errors, which causes the need to reprocess the information, as a consequence, the data is less reliable. Therefore, investment in administrative software is essential. With it, you can automate activities and achieve greater security, productivity and agility in your processes.