What does the ledger already do?
Check the features already in the subscription before buying anything. Xero gives each organisation a unique email address for bills. Forward a bill as an attachment and Xero creates a draft bill, fills in the contact, date, total, due date, reference and description when it can read the document, and applies supplier defaults. Up to 10 bills can go in one email, to 25MB in total. MYOB and QuickBooks Online have their own document capture features. For a business with a few dozen bills a month and one approver, the ledger alone may cover most of the work.
When does a dedicated AP app make sense?
Dedicated AP apps connect to the ledger and add capture, approval routing and payment preparation. They earn their place when several people approve bills, when approval limits differ by amount or cost centre, when one team processes bills for many entities, or when line-level extraction matters. Check whether the app is certified by the ledger. Xero, for example, limits each organisation to five uncertified app connections, with no limit on certified apps. Ask every vendor to show what happens to a bill its software cannot read.
When is a custom workflow worth building?
A custom workflow is built for one practice or business on the ledger's API, often with an automation platform and an AI model that reads documents. It suits exceptions that follow your own rules: supplier statements that need matching to open bills, project codes taken from a job system, or approval routes that depend on a client's structure. It also brings obligations. Someone has to maintain the integration, watch for failures and stay within the ledger's API limits. Xero's limits are 60 calls a minute per connected organisation, and 1,000 calls a day on its starter tier or 5,000 on higher tiers.
Where does outsourced AP fit?
An outsourced or offshore bookkeeping service takes the keying and first-pass coding off your staff. The documents still have to reach the provider, someone still answers its questions, and payment approval stays with the business. For a registered tax or BAS agent, the Tax Practitioners Board's guidance on outsourcing and offshoring applies when client work goes to another party, including client permission for the disclosure and supervision of work done by an unregistered provider. Compare the provider's turnaround and query volume with the time your staff spend on the same bills.
What questions should you ask any option?
Use the same questions for every option so the comparison is fair, and ask them with your own bills in hand: a clean PDF, a photographed receipt, a multi-page supplier statement, a bill with mixed GST lines and a credit note. The answers matter more for the awkward bills than the clean ones. Write the answers in a table with one column per option, and ask each vendor or builder to confirm them in writing. Gaps in the answers are as informative as the answers themselves.
- What happens to a bill it cannot read or code with confidence?
- Where are documents and extracted data stored, and in which country?
- Which ledger permissions does it need, and can it release payments?
- How does it detect duplicate bills and changed bank details?
- Who fixes it when the ledger connection drops or a rule misfires?
- How do you export your data and rules if you leave?
How do you compare the options on your own bills?
Pick one month of bills from one entity or client file and record how long staff spend on capture, coding, chasing approvals and preparing payments. Run the same bills through each shortlisted option in a test file, or in a mode that suggests without posting. Count the bills each option handled without correction and the time spent on the rest. Weight the result toward exception handling, because clean bills are already quick under any option. The AP processing cost calculator on this site can help you put a figure on your current time.