AP Doesn't Take a Summer Break. But Your Strategy Might Need One.
- Philip Rowley
- 5 days ago
- 2 min read
It's mid-July.
Half the team is out. The calendar is quiet. Approvals are slower than usual.
This is the part of the year where most AP teams put their heads down and coast to Q4.
Don't.
The Lull Is a Gift. Most Teams Waste It.
Summer slowdowns feel like a chance to catch your breath. But they're also the one window in the year when you can look at your AP process without a fire burning next to you.
When volume is high and deadlines are tight, nobody asks the hard questions. You're too busy chasing approvals and fielding supplier calls. The process just keeps moving, broken parts and all.
Summer is when the music stops. And that's when you should be asking: is our AP process actually working for everyone it touches?
The Supplier Question Nobody Asks in Q4
Most AP programs were built around the buyer. The buyer's ERP. The buyer's workflow. The buyer's payment schedule.
Suppliers were an afterthought.
That imbalance quietly costs you, in disputes that drag on, in supplier relationships that erode over time, in exceptions your team has to manually resolve quarter after quarter.
By the time Q4 hits, you're too busy to fix it. So the dysfunction rolls into the next year. And the year after that.
The teams that break that cycle aren't the ones who worked harder in October. They're the ones who used July.
Three Questions Worth Asking This Summer
Before Q4 gets loud again:
How many of your exceptions are supplier-created vs. process-created?
If your team spends hours resolving invoice mismatches, that's not a supplier problem. It's a setup problem.
Do your suppliers know where their invoices stand?
If the answer involves a phone call to your AP team, that's a gap.
Are your early payment programs benefiting suppliers, or just your working capital?
If suppliers aren't enrolling, ask why.
Q4 Will Be Here Fast
It always is.
The teams that thrive in it use the summer lull to ask harder questions, and start fixing the right things.
AP doesn't take a summer break. But your strategy might need one.
