25 Accounts Payable Challenges in One Brutal Bingo Card
I’m guessing you didn’t wake up this morning expecting to play bingo? A game headlining 25 accounts payable challenges you’re facing if you’re sticking with manual processes. Yet here we are. Welcome to our 2025 Bingo Card. Your AP automation wake-up call. Mildly amusing, but also a scary realization for anyone still ploughing through spreadsheets, living in the nightmare that is manual data entry.
Your AP Automation Wake-Up Call
Calculating the Cost of Doing Nothing [2025 Edition]
Your business becomes irrelevant. Your competitors leave you standing. You’re done.
If your AP team is stuck chasing down invoice approvals, watching early payment discounts vanish into the void, or having to explain the fourth duplicate payment this quarter – this bingo card is for you.
Check off five or more and it’s time to stop pretending it’s “not that bad.” It’s bad. Believe me. It’s real bad. I’ll tell you why…
25 Accounts Payable Challenges in One Brutal Bingo Card.
Why we created our bingo card – and why you must use it
Hey! I’m not trying to shame finance teams. I’m identifying patterns that are so widespread, they’re often mistaken for “that’s how AP works.”
The truth?
Manual, fragmented, and error-prone accounts payable processes aren’t normal. They’re expensive, operationally damaging, and culturally demoralizing.
You think your team’s happy punching keys all day, every day?
Easy to ignore the symptoms. Be an ostrich. Until the day you’re asked why your team’s spending 30% more on AP than a company half the size.
So… we made a bingo card.
Sometimes, a bit of gallows humor helps us admit we’re in trouble.
What makes these 25 accounts payable challenges concerning?
Okay. Down to business…
The real impact behind these checkboxes. Not hypotheticals. Not vendor pitches. Genuine consequences of clinging to outdated processes.
1. Time lost is money lost
When your AP team spends hours typing in data or manually matching purchase orders, it’s not exactly high-value or inspiring work. It’s time consuming. Every hour chasing an approval is an hour not spent optimizing cash flow or improving vendor relationships.
2. Burnout is a process problem
If your accounts payable team is constantly trying to find its way through email threads or buried under paperwork mountains, it’s not a talent issue. It’s a system issue. People don’t leave jobs because they hate numbers. They leave because they’re frustrated and exhausted with dodgy processes.
3. Errors sneak up on you
Only one duplicate payment. No biggie.
What about the ten? What about the quarter you miss closing on time because someone had the wrong invoice version? Small mistakes in accounts payable departments have a tendency to snowball.
4. Poor visibility = poor decisions
When leadership doesn’t have real-time insight into spend, they’re shooting in the dark. It’s impossible to manage cash flow effectively with guesswork.
5. Vendor relationships deteriorate fast
If vendors are chasing your AP team for payments, trust erodes pretty quickly. Late fees start showing up. Projects get delayed. Opportunities vanish.
6. Non-compliance isn’t an “if”
If your AP process can’t show who approved what and when, it’s unlikely you’ll pass an audit with flying colors.
This’ll help… Automating the End-to-End Process of Accounts Payable – 14 Tips
The real cost of doing nothing
A lot of teams persevere with manual accounts payable because while it’s a pain, it’s familiar. But here’s the problem… inefficiency builds up quietly. And then, BOOM! You’re hit with the cost.
One late invoice. One missed discount. One confused auditor.
Add them up and you’ve got an AP bottleneck.
Ask yourself…
- Are your AP experts spending most of their time doing repetitive work?
- Are you super stressed before every quarter close or audit?
- Are your AP costs increasing alongside headcount?
If the answer to any is yes, it’s not going to fix itself. And no, adding one more spreadsheet or doctoring your current tool is a temporary fix.
“A third of accountants make several financial errors per week due to capacity constraints.” Gartner
Your AP Automation Wake-Up Call
Our eBook will show you how doing nothing means your organization is left behind. Doing nothing will get you fired. Doing nothing will be the most expensive mistake you ever make.
Why 5 boxes is the magic number
If you check off five accounts payable challenges from the bingo card, you’ve got yourself a pattern.
BINGO!
Not a one-off stroke of bad luck. Not a temporary hiccup. It means your AP process is broken enough to damage your performance.
Automation is the solution. Not because it’s the latest buzzword. Because the alternative is burnout, money wasted, and endless backlogs.
Automation is how smart finance teams stop losing time and money on tasks AI can handle faster, better, and with near-perfect accuracy.
According to a PYMNTS report – Accounts Payable and Receivable Trends: What’s Next in Automation – 84% of companies who have fully automated their AP report increased cash flow and savings.
Humor helps, but don’t ignore the risks
Our accounts payable challenges bingo card is supposed to be playful. I think we’ve all had our fill of earnest whitepapers on AP transformation.
But, behind the humor are real accounts payable challenges finance teams face every day…
- Poor Sam still scanning paper invoices that arrive by snail mail
- Or Charlie missing a board report deadline because invoice approvals got lost in someone’s inbox
- Not forgetting Alex waking up to how much time and money was wasted before automating data matching and exception handling
You need to stop settling for the AP operational processes you inherited five years ago. The version that keeps adding headcount, churning out data entry errors, and dragging down performance.
Next team meeting… present the bingo card. See how many of your team stifle a sigh and start checking boxes. It’s going to hurt, but it’ll open the door to improvement.
Don’t wait until your next audit catastrophe to take action. If you check 5 boxes, you’ve already outgrown your current AP process.
If five or more boxes on the card feels familiar, let’s talk automation.