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Everyone is talking about AI in AP. Vendors are slapping "AI-powered" on everything. Finance leaders are fielding pitches left and right. And somewhere in the middle, AP teams are wondering: is any of this actually changing anything? The honest answer? It depends on what you mean by AI. AI-Enabled: Faster. Not Fundamentally Different. Most AP platforms today are AI-enabled. They've layered machine learning or predictive routing on top of existing automation. Things move faste

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.

A new content hub for AP professionals, led by an accountant who has run AP departments and now shapes the products that serve them San Francisco - April 21, 2026 - Direct Commerce , the company reshaping AP automation with its Supplier First™ approach, today announced the launch of the AP Institute, one of the industry's first dedicated content hub for Accounts Payable professionals. The company also named Daniel Shore as its Vice President of Product at Direct Commerce a

"That Made Me Question A Decade Worth of Work." Joe Hyland, President of Direct Commerce, has worked in the industry for decades. A few years ago, he started asking a simple question: who is AP automation actually working for? He started talking with industry experts, with CFOs, with mom-and-pop small business suppliers. One phrase kept coming up: "Free for suppliers." But treasurers made it more clear. If their vendors charged high subscription fees or gainshare, they had t

With bad data. Billing and AP aren’t inefficient. They’re stuck mediating problems they didn’t create. The invoice doesn’t match the PO. The receipt is missing. The amount is wrong. So your team steps in. Again. And again. This isn’t automation. It’s dependency. Most billing and AP systems process invoices. They don’t prevent bad data from entering. So exceptions become the operating model. Real efficiency starts upstream. Because you can’t automate toxic data. You eliminate

According to recent Shared Services & Outsourcing Network (SSON) research, most AP functions remain less than 50% automated , even after decades of technology investment. The problem isn’t automation itself. It’s how it’s been designed. Traditional AP automation focuses almost entirely on buyer efficiency, often overlooking suppliers in the process. The result is familiar: fragmented supplier portals, limited invoice visibility, extended payment terms, and rising inquiry volu

When Taylor Swift shows up at a Chiefs game, cameras don’t scan the whole field. They cut straight to Travis Kelce. Because that’s where the action is. AP automation has the same blind spot. AP Automation solutions have always spotlighted the clean, fast plays—invoice capture, routing, straight-through processing. That’s the highlight reel. But the part that decides whether it delivers happens somewhere else. It happens in the red zone. Most finance teams have automated the e