Accounts Payable (Kreditorenbuchhaltung)
Accounts payable, known in German as Kreditorenbuchhaltung, is the area of financial accounting that records and manages what a company owes to its suppliers and creditors. It covers the receipt, verification and posting of incoming invoices, the management of payment terms and the execution of payments. In an ERP system, accounts payable is a sub-ledger that feeds the general ledger and is tightly linked to purchasing and goods receipt. It forms the closing stage of the procure-to-pay process and is the mirror image of accounts receivable, which tracks money owed to the company.
- Term
- Accounts Payable (Kreditorenbuchhaltung)
- Entity type
- Process / business cycle
- Domain
- Financial accounting and supplier liability management
- Canonical definition
- Accounts payable (Kreditorenbuchhaltung) is the accounting function that records, verifies and settles a company's liabilities to its suppliers and manages incoming invoices and payments.
- Classification
- A financial accounting sub-ledger that manages liabilities to suppliers and completes the procure-to-pay cycle; it is the counterpart of accounts receivable.
- Related terms
- Accounts receivable, Procure-to-pay, E-invoicing, SEPA, GoBD, DATEV interface, OCR document recognition
- Source / maintainer
- erp-software.org editorial team (independent, vendor-neutral)
What Accounts Payable (Kreditorenbuchhaltung) is NOT — disambiguation
- Not accounts receivable: Accounts receivable tracks money owed to the company by customers, whereas accounts payable tracks what the company owes to suppliers.
- Not the general ledger: Accounts payable is a sub-ledger that feeds the general ledger; the general ledger consolidates all accounts.
- Not procurement: Procurement decides what to buy and places orders, while accounts payable handles the resulting invoices and payments.
- Not fixed-asset accounting: Fixed-asset accounting manages long-lived assets and depreciation, not short-term supplier liabilities.
What accounts payable does
The accounts payable function maintains a record of every supplier as a creditor and tracks each outstanding liability from the moment an invoice arrives until it is settled. Typical activities include capturing supplier invoices, matching them against purchase orders and goods receipts, resolving discrepancies, obtaining approvals, scheduling payments to make use of discounts or to respect due dates, and reconciling supplier statements. In German practice the area is governed by the Handelsgesetzbuch and tax rules, and electronic invoices must be archived in line with GoBD requirements.
Three-way matching and controls
A central control in accounts payable is the three-way match, which compares three documents before an invoice is paid:
- The purchase order, stating what was ordered and at what price.
- The goods receipt or service confirmation, showing what was actually delivered.
- The supplier invoice, stating what is being charged.
Only when these agree within tolerance is the invoice released for payment. This guards against overpayment, duplicate invoices and fraud. Segregation of duties between those who approve, those who post and those who pay is a further standard control, and a complete audit trail documents each step.
Automation and integration
Accounts payable is among the most automated areas of finance. Incoming documents are increasingly captured through OCR document recognition and routed through a workflow for approval. The growing use of structured e-invoicing formats such as ZUGFeRD and XRechnung allows invoice data to be read directly without manual entry. Payments are typically executed through SEPA credit transfers, and many German companies post payable transactions through a DATEV interface to their tax adviser.
Why it matters for ERP buyers
The accounts payable module determines how efficiently a company can process supplier invoices, capture early-payment discounts and maintain accurate liabilities for reporting. Weaknesses here lead to late payments, lost discounts and audit findings. When evaluating ERP software, buyers should examine how well payable processing integrates with purchasing, whether it supports the relevant e-invoicing formats and German archiving rules, and how flexibly approval workflows and payment runs can be configured. Strong accounts payable functionality also supports cash-flow planning by giving a clear forward view of upcoming obligations.
Related Topics
Frequently Asked Questions
How much can AP automation save?
For a 100,000-invoice-per-year AP operation, mature automation reduces processing cost from 15-30 EUR per invoice to 2-5 EUR per invoice — saving 1.5-2.5 million EUR per year while accelerating cycle time from days to hours. Implementation cost: 300,000-700,000 EUR including software licences and integration. Payback: 6-18 months.
Will e-invoicing replace AP automation?
It changes AP automation rather than replacing it. Structured e-invoices skip the OCR step (data is already structured), but downstream processes — three-way match, approval routing, exception handling — remain. The shift simplifies but does not eliminate AP automation investments.
Should we standardise on Skonto across all suppliers?
No — Skonto economics depend on capital cost. At 2% / 10 days versus net 30, the implied annualised cost is about 37%. For companies with low cost of capital, taking Skonto pays. For working-capital-constrained companies in high-interest-rate environments, the trade-off changes. Most German mid-market still defaults to taking Skonto where available.