Glossary · Accounting
Accounts payable (AP)
Also called Payables, Creditors, Trade creditors
Accounts payable is the money a business owes its suppliers for goods and services received but not yet paid. Your invoice is in your customer’s AP.
Accounts payable (AP) — “creditors” in UK usage — is the total of a business’s unpaid supplier bills, recorded as a current liability. It is the mirror image of accounts receivable: your receivable is your customer’s payable.
The AP team is who actually pays your invoice. Their process — invoice receipt, matching to a purchase order, approval, payment run — decides when you get paid, so knowing how a customer’s AP works is half of collecting from them.
Practical consequences: send invoices to the AP address, not just your project contact; quote the PO; and learn when the payment runs are, so you can make sure your invoice is approved in time.
Example
A client’s AP team pays suppliers every second Thursday, for invoices approved by the Monday before. An invoice approved on Tuesday waits more than two weeks for the next run.