[Editor’s Note: Ardent Partners recently published its Accounts Payable-themed report, “The State of ePayables 2025: AP’s Unfinished Journey.” Over the next several weeks, this site will feature our series highlighting key AP management strategies and top priorities for 2025.
If the unfinished journey of Accounts Payable had a trail marker, it would be paper. Despite two decades of transformation, paper invoices and manual processes remain embedded in far too many AP environments. While progress has been made, particularly in the adoption of electronic payments, the persistence of paper underscores how far the function still has to go.
Ardent Partners 2025 survey results show that, on average, slightly more than half (51.4%) of all invoices are submitted electronically. And though electronic payments have gained more traction (68%), they remain inconsistent across organizations and industries. Each paper invoice that must be scanned or manually entered represents time lost, risk incurred, and insight deferred. For every manual check cut, there’s a missed opportunity to strengthen controls, reduce costs, and improve execution.
ePayables solutions, for all their promise, have not yet delivered a paperless process, let alone a digital future. This is not an indictment of AP teams or solution providers, but rather a reflection of the complexity of driving change across a department and enterprise. On the positive side, AP teams fully expect to become more digital this year: 83% of AP leaders expect the number of eInvoices to increase this year, while a similar 78% expect more ePayments.
Reality Check: Big Opportunities, Limited Involvement In recent years, leading AP teams have expanded their duties and have developed a richer understanding of how their actions and decisions impact enterprise performance. In fact, new Ardent Partners research has found that many of today’s AP teams have started to chart their own course by pursuing responsibilities in more areas. But after 20 years, these numbers should be higher.
The potential for every AP team to expand its role in key areas is significant, yet far too many remain on the outside looking in. The list below notes the percentage of AP teams with either heavy or moderate involvement in each area.
- Fraud prevention (79%): This is AP’s strongest showing, and for good reason. As the team that approves, processes, and executes payments, AP is often the last line of defense against fraud. Through rigorous controls, anomaly detection, and system access governance, AP can catch irregularities before they become financial losses. Maintaining tight partnerships with internal audit and IT teams can further solidify this role.
- Driving financial visibility & business intelligence (45%): With AP’s access to real-time data on spend, payments, and cash flows, it is uniquely positioned to support finance in delivering insights to the business. However, less than half of all teams actively participate in this area of enterprise analytics. To expand its impact, AP leaders can advocate for better data tools, contribute to cross-functional reporting, and assign a data lead within the department.
- Paying contingent labor (40%): Managing non-traditional labor has become more common, yet many AP teams are not structured to support fast, compliant payments to gig workers. AP can work closely with HR and procurement to streamline onboarding, track services, and ensure timely payments to these workers.
- Spend management (33%): Despite their line of sight into spend, only one third of AP teams are part of the broader spend management strategy. By aligning with procurement, AP can help their partner identify savings opportunities, curb maverick spend, and track contract compliance. A seat at the spend planning table ensures AP’s insight drives smarter decisions.
- Cash management and liquidity (32%): Because AP executes payments, it has a direct impact on cash flow. Still, few teams are deeply involved in liquidity planning. AP should proactively collaborate with treasury (and/or the CFO), offer payment timing models and schedules, and provide inputs to cash flow scenarios that support the business’ cash needs more dynamically.
- Supplier relationship management (30%): AP interacts with suppliers regularly but is not generally viewed as a relationship steward. Improving supplier communication, ensuring accurate and timely payments, and contributing to supplier onboarding can elevate AP’s role and reduce friction with supplier transactions and the overall lifecycle.
Increasing involvement in these areas should not be considered a stretch goal, for each is a logical extension of AP’s reach. It is time for AP leaders to step forward, assert their department’s value, and seek bigger roles in these areas. The future belongs to the teams that claim it.
