How it works
AP is both a balance sheet liability and a process. Bills arrive, are coded to accounts, matched to purchase orders where required, approved and scheduled for payment. When payment goes out, a bill payment clears the liability. The AP subledger tracks each open bill by vendor and due date, and its total ties to the AP control account in the general ledger.
Example
A restaurant group has $85,000 in open bills across 70 food and equipment suppliers. Its AP aging report shows which are due this week, which are overdue, and which carry early-payment discounts.
In integrations
AP products need vendors, bills, bill payments and the right expense accounts from each customer's ledger. The Unify Accounting API is designed to read and write those objects in one shape, with idempotent writes and an audit trail. The AP automation solution page shows the end-to-end flow. AP is where software companies most often add write-back first, because entering bills twice is the pain customers notice. It is also where duplicate or misposted payments cause the most damage.