Accounts Payable: Accounting and Management Best Practices

Accounts payable is where a weak control environment turns into a cash loss. Duplicate payments, invoices paid without a receipt, a supplier master file nobody maintains, and a year end accrual built from guesswork are all the same underlying problem: the three way match has become a formality rather than a control. This week treats payables as a control function and as a cash lever, from master data and the match through to accruals, disputes, and the supplier relationship that depends on being paid predictably.

It runs 7 times over the published calendar, in 6 cities and live online. Every date is the same programme with the same content and the same certificate.

• Operate a three way match that would actually stop an incorrect payment.
• Maintain a supplier master file that cannot be changed by whoever raises payments.
• Detect duplicate and fraudulent invoices before the payment run.
• Build an accrual from open commitments rather than from an estimate.
• Manage payment terms as a cash decision without damaging supply.

Accounts payable supervisors and staff, financial accountants responsible for payables and accruals, shared service centre staff, and internal auditors reviewing the function.

Short input, then work. Across 5 days of roughly 6 teaching hours each, the balance sits deliberately with the second: a programme where the trainer talks for six hours produces notes rather than capability.

• Your own material

  Exercises run on situations delegates bring, not on a case study written for a different organisation in a different decade.

• A capped cohort

  Small enough that everybody is asked something. Executive programmes are capped tighter still.

• Practice under scrutiny

  The difficult conversation, the challenged assumption, the decision defended out loud. Judgement is not built by watching.

• Something to take back

  Each day ends with a thing you can use on Monday rather than a slide deck you will not reopen.

• A control map of the delegate's payables process, with the gaps named.
• A duplicate and anomaly routine they can run on their own data.
• A month end accrual method based on commitments rather than estimation.

A GATI certificate recording what you attended, issued after the programme has run and attendance has been taken. Attending at least 80 per cent of the days earns a certificate of completion; attending less earns a certificate of attendance stating exactly what was attended.

Every certificate carries a code that anybody can check against GATI's own record, which is what makes it worth holding. It records participation. This site will not imply one it does not have.