head·ache Pronunciation[hed-eyk]
-noun
1. a pain located in the head, as over the eyes, at the temples, or at the base of the skull. 
2. an annoying or bothersome person, situation, activity, etc. 

What is THE biggest AP headache?

To answer that question, we recently conducted a very interesting survey of over 1000 finance professionals - mostly AP professionals, AP managers & supervisors but also some controllers, auditors and finance VPs.  The typical company profile was an organization with >$250M in revenue and >2500 invoices per month. We asked a very simple question:

What are your top 3 AP headaches? 

The results were fascinating!  Here they are:

Let me highlight (what I thought were) some surprising results:

• I found it very interesting that reducing costs was only 5th.  With the pressures of globalization and outsourcing, I expected a much higher response than 30%.  CFOs are definitely thinking about reducing costs (see my previous blog entry).  There seems to be a bit of disconnect between what's keeping CFOs up at night and what's keeping AP Managers from a good night's rest.
• Dealing with SOX is still a top 3 headache despite SOX being around for over 6 years now.  In fact, compliance costs continue to rise for the average company according to The Hackett Group.
• Constantly being interrupted ranked #2.  I guess this is understandable since some studies show that up to 30% of an AP Specialist's time is spent fielding vendor inquiries!

As you can see the #1 Headache was too much time wasted chasing paper.  Despite two decades of "paperless office" predictions, numerous studies show that over 80% of invoices are still paper-based!

Why?

Well, to answer that question would take too long for a blog entry.  If you want a very comprehensive answer (and I do mean comprehensive!), check out our webcast with Jon Casher from last month titled,  "The #1 AP Headache is ..."

-Rakesh Shukla