For more than two decades, Ardent Partners’ annual State of Accounts Payable research has tracked the evolution of Accounts Payable from a transactional back-office function into an increasingly strategic contributor to enterprise performance. As AP organizations have moved beyond paper invoices, manual data entry, and check-based payments, benchmarks around efficiency, automation, accuracy, and control have become essential tools for understanding performance and identifying opportunities for improvement.
We are introducing a new Ardent Partners multi-part article series examining the benchmarks shaping Accounts Payable performance today and defining where the function is headed next. Drawing on Ardent’s latest research, AP Metrics that Matter in 2026, the article series will debut Best-in-Class AP metrics, providing a clear view of how top-performing organizations compare with their peers across critical measures of efficiency, effectiveness, and value delivery, while also introducing AI metrics that benchmark the adoption, maturity, and impact of artificial intelligence across AP.
Today, AP is entering another important phase. Finance leaders are being asked to deliver greater efficiency, strengthen financial controls, improve supplier experiences, increase visibility, and contribute more directly to enterprise objectives. At the same time, artificial intelligence is introducing new capabilities across the invoice-to-pay lifecycle, creating opportunities to automate work, reduce exceptions, improve decision-making, and increase the strategic value of AP.
Against this backdrop, understanding the metrics that define AP performance has never been more important. Knowing how your organization compares with industry benchmarks can help identify operational gaps, prioritize improvement initiatives, and establish a clearer path toward a more efficient and strategic AP function.
The benchmarks are drawn from The State of AP 2026: AI Rising, Ardent Partners’ latest research based on the perspectives and experiences of 194 AP, Finance, and P2P leaders worldwide. Together, these findings provide a data-driven view of where the AP function stands in 2026, where Best-in-Class organizations are creating an advantage, and where opportunities remain to improve performance.
The metrics that matter provide more than a snapshot of performance. They provide a roadmap for where AP can go next.
