Every finance team is in a race. The terrain? The invoice-to-cash journey. And like any race, the path to strong cash flow and lower Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) isn’t always smooth. Hurdles emerge in the form of customer processes, payment delays, and—you guessed it—accounts payable (AP) portals.
Take a lap around the challenges of managing customer AP portals in accounts receivable (AR) and learn how to clear the obstacles, set your pace, and ultimately cross the finish line stronger and faster with the help of AR automation.
The Starting Line: Understanding the AP Portal Challenge
You’re ready to deliver your invoice. Your customer is theoretically ready, willing, and able to pay. But between those two points stands a digital gatekeeper: their AP portal. While the tool promises to simplify the accounts payable process for both parties, it often feels like being asked to run with weights on your ankles when you are on the AR team.
Here’s the reality:
- Many customers now require invoices to be uploaded into their online AP interface. No email. No exceptions.
- Manual AP portal uploads create logjams and add days—or weeks—to your collections timeline.
- Even worse, some portals are so complex, unique, or inconsistent that your team spends hours just trying to figure out where to click.
Instead of sprinting toward payment, you’re stuck warming up. Again.
Hurdles on the Course: Manual Uploads and Fragmented Workflows
Manual portal uploads have become one of the most common—and most underappreciated— bottlenecks in the AR process. Here’s why they can be challenging:
- Every portal is different: One customer’s portal might be straightforward; another might have dozens of required fields, approval steps, and documentation needs. There's no standardization.
- Time-consuming processes: If you’re like most, you’re juggling many portals at a time, each with their own credentials and quirks. That means logging in, manually inputting invoice details, attaching documentation, and checking back frequently just to make sure it went through.
- Delays without visibility: Once submitted, there’s often no notification system or timeline provided. It becomes a black hole: Did the invoice go through? Is it in review? Was there an error? Who the heck knows?
- Higher risk of errors: Manual keying introduces opportunities for typos, mismatched data, and missing fields. All of which can lead to rejected or unpaid invoices. Or worse, an invoice floating out in the ether.
When this is your day to day, it’s not just about delayed payments. It’s about team burnout, wasted resources, and unpredictable performance. You're stuck running in place.
Setting the Pace: Automating AP Portal Workflows
Platforms like Quadient AR allow you to automate the AP portal process end to end, which means your team no longer needs to manually log into each portal and rekey invoice data. Instead:
- Invoices are automatically uploaded to customer portals as soon as they’re ready.
- Data is matched, verified, and submitted using predefined workflows that account for each customer’s unique requirements.
- Your team gets real-time visibility into the status of submissions—including rejections, approvals, and processing stages.
This doesn’t just save time. It builds momentum. AR automation ensures you’re not wasting energy on every step and instead getting closer to the finish line — which is cash in the bank.
You’ll reduce errors, avoid delays, and have the confidence of knowing every invoice is headed exactly where it needs to go.
Clearing the Toughest Obstacles: Portal Prioritization
You wouldn’t approach a marathon without a strategy. The same goes for AP portal automation. Instead of trying to overhaul every portal at once, the Quadient AR approach uses targeted prioritization.
You get there via a process that includes workshops, joint assessments, and data input support, all aimed at addressing your unique needs to unlock massive value in a short amount of time. For example, first automating a single portal for a top—and frequently invoiced—customer could save valuable staff hours. Likewise, prioritizing your highest revenue-producing buyers and quickest-paying buyers will have the biggest positive impact on your cash flow.
The idea isn’t to automate everything overnight. It’s to strategically clear the toughest hurdles first. So, you’re running smarter and not just harder.
The Home Stretch: Visibility, Speed, and Control
With AP portal automation in place, your AR process begins to feel less like an uphill sprint and more like a well-paced relay that:
- Reduces your hurdles by transmitting invoices directly to your buyers’ AP portals
- Maximizes your efforts by driving a higher success rate for invoice insertion
- Increases your speed by facilitating faster invoice delivery and payment
And most importantly? You reach the finish line faster—and win—via reduced DSO, less manual effort across the board, and more consistent cash flow.