Understand Accounts Payable

Overview

Accounts Payable helps your office team manage what your business owes to vendors. Track bills from receipt through reconciliation and payment in one place to maintain accurate job costs, gain a clear view of spending, and keep vendor records ready to export to your accounting software.

The AP Automation package streamlines bill processing by drafting bills from vendor invoices, identifying discrepancies on purchase order bills before reconciliation, and routing bills through an approval workflow before payment or export.

Things to know

• Set up Accounts Payable before you start working with bills. For more, see Set up Accounts Payable.

• Accounts Payable covers the full bill lifecycle: create bills, reconcile them, and create payments to your vendors.

• The AP Automation features add the AP Inbox, 3-Way Matching, and Bill Approvals on top of Accounts Payable. Not all features are available to every account. Contact your CSM to learn more.

• Bills follow a set sequence of statuses as you review and reconcile them. To learn what each status means, see Understand bill statuses.

• You reconcile bills before you pay or export them. Reconciled bills cannot be edited.

Best practices

• Reconcile bills regularly so your payables stay current and your spending view stays accurate.

• Map your general ledger accounts during setup. This keeps payments and exports accurate. For details, see Set up general ledger accounts.

• Decide who on your team reviews bills, who reconciles them, and who creates payments. Clear roles keep bills moving.

• If your team handles a high volume of vendor bills, ask your CSM about AP Automation features to reduce manual entry and review.

Use cases

• An office employee receives a vendor bill, enters it in ServiceTitan, and reconciles it against the related purchase order.

• A bookkeeper reconciles a batch of bills at the end of the week, then creates payments for the reconciled bills.

• An accountant exports reconciled bills and statements to the company's accounting software to close the books.

• A team uses the AP Inbox to auto-draft bills from emailed vendor invoices, then lets 3-Way Matching flag any discrepancies.

The Accounts Payable lifecycle

Accounts Payable in ServiceTitan follows three stages. A bill moves through each stage in order, from the moment you receive it to the moment you pay it.

Stage 1: Create the bill

A bill records what you owe a vendor. You can create a bill from a received purchase order, or create a non-purchase order bill for costs that do not tie to a PO. Each bill captures the vendor, the items or costs, quantities, and totals.

Stage 2: Reconcile the bill

Reconciliation confirms a bill is accurate before you pay it. You review the bill, resolve any discrepancies as needed, and mark it as reconciled. After a bill is reconciled, it cannot be edited.

Note: Bills without a purchase order can reconcile automatically on creation if your team enables that setting. For more, see Set up Accounts Payable.

Stage 3: Pay the bill

After a bill is reconciled, record its payment to keep your records accurate and help you reconcile your bank statements. Mark the bill as paid to update its status and reflect the payment against the vendor's balance.

If your account is set up to process vendor payments in ServiceTitan, you can also create a payment to your remittance vendor. You can pay bills individually or add them to a statement and pay the balance. For details, see Create payments for bills.

Where Accounts Payable settings live

You manage Accounts Payable settings outside the day-to-day Accounting screens.

1. Go to the top toolbar and click Settings.

2. In the side panel, click Accounting > Accounts Payable Configuration.

Note: Purchasing appears if you use the Purchasing Module. Inventory appears if you use the Inventory Module.

Add automation with AP Automation features

AP Automation features build on Accounts Payable. They add two tools that reduce manual work for high-volume teams:

• AP Inbox: Automatically drafts bills from vendor invoices that arrive by email or upload. Your team reviews each draft instead of typing every bill by hand.

• 3-Way Matching: Automatically compares each bill against its purchase order and receipt, then flags any differences in quantity, cost, tax, or shipping for review.

• Bill Approvals: Automatically route bills for approval based on rules like bill amount, vendor, or business unit. Low-risk bills are approved automatically, so approvers can focus on exceptions.

Not all AP Automation features are available to every account. Contact your CSM to learn more.

To learn how these features work, see Find Vendor Discrepancies with 3-Way Matching.

Want to learn more?

• See Set up Accounts Payable

• See Understand bill statuses See Create payments for bills

• See Find Vendor Discrepancies with 3-Way Matching