Accounts payable statistics: 57 sourced figures on cost, errors, AI and payments

The latest accounts payable statistics put the average cost to process an invoice at $9.84 and the average processing time at 8.2 days, with 18.4% of invoices hitting an exception (Ardent Partners, 2025). Manual work hasn't gone away. 77% of organizations still key invoices into their systems by hand (IFOL, 2026), even as 58% of AP teams use or pilot AI (Ardent Partners, 2026).

Each figure is numbered so you can cite one, and each links to the organization that published it. We checked every number against its source in September 2026. Several AP numbers that circulate widely are a decade old or can't be traced at all, so start with the table of stale figures if you're updating an older article.

• Cost and cycle time

  Cost per invoice, days to approve and pay, invoices per FTE. Stats 1 to 10

• Exceptions and errors

  Exception rates, first-pass matching, duplicate payments. Stats 11 to 17

• Manual entry and paper

  How many invoices still arrive on paper and get keyed by hand. Stats 18 to 24

• AI and automation

  Who uses AI in AP, for what, and how it's going. Stats 25 to 34

• B2B payments

  Checks, ACH and what each costs. Stats 35 to 42

• E-invoicing

  EU rules and mandates worldwide. Stats 43 to 47

• AP workforce

  Jobs, pay and the accounting talent pipeline. Stats 48 to 53

• Late payments

  Overdue invoices, DPO and trapped working capital. Stats 54 to 57

Stale AP statistics and what to cite instead#

Some of the most-linked AP numbers online have no report behind them, or come from a survey that has since been updated. Before you reuse one, check it against this table.

Cost to process an invoice and cycle time#

Ardent Partners surveys AP leaders each year. APQC collects benchmarks from thousands of organizations in a rolling database, so its medians carry no data year. The two measure costs differently, which is why their per-invoice figures differ.

1. The average cost to process an invoice is $9.84, according to 204 AP professionals surveyed for the State of ePayables 2025 (Ardent Partners, 2026).

2. The average invoice processing time is 8.2 days (Ardent Partners, 2026).

3. Best-in-Class AP teams process invoices at 79% lower cost and 79% faster than their peers (Ardent Partners, 2026).

4. In the early 2000s, invoice processing costs could easily exceed $20 per invoice, and cycle times regularly ran past 20 days (Ardent Partners, 2025).

5. The median total cost to run the accounts payable process is $6.00 per invoice processed, across 5,846 organizations (APQC).

6. The median organization spends $0.57 on accounts payable for every $1,000 of revenue (APQC).

7. It takes a median of 5.0 days from receiving an invoice to approving and scheduling it for payment, across 9,682 organizations (APQC).

8. From receipt until the payment is sent, the median is 15.0 days, which includes waiting for the payment term (APQC).

9. The median AP team processes 12,000 invoices per full-time employee a year (APQC).

10. The median organization employs 8.3 FTEs per $1 billion of revenue to process accounts payable and expense reimbursements (APQC).

To see what these averages mean at your volume, put your own numbers in. The per-metric formulas are in our guide to accounts payable benchmarks.

Exceptions, errors and duplicate payments#

11. The average invoice exception rate is 18.4% (Ardent Partners, 2026).

12. Best-in-Class AP teams have 47% lower exception rates than the rest of the market, and process more than 1.8 times as many invoices straight through (Ardent Partners, 2026).

13. 48% of AP leaders name slow invoice and payment approvals as a top challenge for 2026, tied with high exception rates (Ardent Partners, 2026).

14. The median organization processes 92.0% of invoices error-free the first time (APQC).

15. A median of 75.0% of invoice line items are matched the first time (APQC).

16. A median of 1.5% of disbursements are duplicate or erroneous payments, across 1,686 organizations (APQC).

17. Top performers keep duplicate or erroneous payments to 0.8% of disbursements, while bottom performers report 2% (APQC via CFO.com, 2020).

Our take. An 18.4% exception rate means close to one invoice in five still needs a person, so the useful question is how quickly that person can clear it. We'd send a reviewer only the invoices that failed a check, with the reason and the source line on screen, rather than chase a touchless rate on clean invoices. More on how that works in duplicate invoice detection and 2-way vs 3-way matching.

Manual entry and paper invoices#

18. 77% of organizations still enter invoices into their accounting systems by hand, and only 19% describe their AP function as mostly or fully automated (IFOL, 2026).

19. 63% of AP professionals spend more than 10 hours a week on invoice processing (IFOL, 2025).

20. Slightly more than half of all invoices, 51.4%, are submitted electronically (Ardent Partners, 2025).

21. 57% of suppliers can now send invoices electronically (Ardent Partners, 2026).

22. AP staff spend 21.9% of their time dealing with suppliers (Ardent Partners, 2026).

23. A median of 75.0% of invoice line items arrive electronically. APQC counts line items rather than invoices, so this doesn't contradict Ardent's 51.4% (APQC).

24. 83% of AP leaders expect the number of e-invoices they receive to rise, and 78% expect more electronic payments (Ardent Partners, 2025).

Invoices that arrive as PDFs, scans and email attachments are where keying persists. Docsumo reads them, extracts header fields and line items with a confidence score on each, and flags duplicates. It matches invoices to purchase orders and receipts on the Enterprise plan. See invoice data extraction and accounts payable automation.

AI and automation in accounts payable#

25. 58% of AP organizations are actively using or piloting AI. 34% are piloting, 23% have deployed it across several functions, 30% are still exploring and 11% say it isn't a priority (Ardent Partners, 2026).

26. Invoice capture and data extraction lead current AI deployment in AP, at 58% (Ardent Partners, 2026).

27. Document imaging and scanning is the most widely adopted AP technology, at 72%. Automated routing and approval workflows follow at 68%, and electronic payments and automated data capture are each at 62% (Ardent Partners, 2026).

28. 74% of AP leaders name automating tasks as a top-two objective for AI, and 46% name budget and headcount reduction (Ardent Partners, 2026).

29. Improving reporting and data analytics is the top AP priority for 2026, at 46%, ahead of automation (41%) and deploying AI (27%) (Ardent Partners, 2026).

30. 19% of organizations already use AI within AP and another 30% plan to adopt it within 12 months. Only 16% report broad or fully embedded use (IFOL, 2026).

31. 59% of finance leaders used AI in their finance function in 2025, up from 58% in 2024 and 37% in 2023 (Gartner, 2025).

32. Among finance functions that use AI, 37% apply it to accounts payable process automation, the second most common use after knowledge management at 49% (Gartner, 2025).

33. 63% of finance organizations said their AI implementation was slower than expected in 2025. Among those using AI, 66% named greater efficiency and productivity as a top benefit (Gartner, 2026).

34. 19.8% of US businesses use AI, and the rate in finance and insurance is 33.9% (US Census Bureau, 2026).

Read together, the surveys say AI in AP starts where the paper is. Capture and extraction come first because they're measurable within weeks: fewer invoices keyed and fewer fields a person had to fix. For the approach, see AI invoice processing and how Docsumo runs document workflows.

B2B payments: checks and ACH#

35. Checks made up 26% of B2B payments in 2025, down from 33% in 2022 (AFP, 2025).

36. In 2004, 81% of B2B payments were made by check (Nacha, on the AFP survey, 2025).

37. B2B check payments fell from 4.6 billion in 2015 to 2.7 billion in 2024, while B2B ACH payments more than doubled, from 3.6 billion to 8.7 billion (Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, 2026).

38. 87% of businesses still used checks in 2025, down from 91% in 2024 (Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, 2026).

39. The ACH Network carried 35.2 billion payments worth $93 trillion in 2025. B2B volume grew almost 10%, to close to 8.1 billion payments (Nacha, 2026).

40. Same Day ACH carried 1.4 billion payments worth $3.9 trillion in 2025, up 16.7% in volume and 21.4% in value (Nacha, 2026).

41. Across all payers, US check payments fell to 9.21 billion in 2024, worth $24.45 trillion, from 11.05 billion in 2021 (Federal Reserve Payments Study, 2026).

42. The median cost of issuing a paper check is $2.01 to $4.00, against 26 to 50 cents for an ACH payment (AFP 2022 survey, via Nacha).

E-invoicing mandates and adoption#

43. The EU adopted its VAT in the Digital Age (ViDA) package on 11 March 2025, and it came into force on 14 April 2025. Since then, member states can make e-invoicing mandatory under set conditions (European Commission).

44. Digital reporting with e-invoices becomes mandatory for cross-border B2B trade in the EU from 1 July 2030, and national systems must align by 1 January 2035 (European Commission).

45. The Commission expects ViDA to cut administrative and compliance costs for EU traders by over €4.1 billion a year over the next ten years (European Commission).

46. More than 80 countries have implemented or announced mandatory e-invoicing (International Observatory on eInvoicing, Politecnico di Milano, 2025).

47. A median of 70.0% of supplier invoices arrive through an e-invoicing network interface, in a smaller sample of 454 organizations (APQC).

The accounts payable workforce#

48. The US had 1,532,400 bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerk jobs in 2025, at a median pay of $50,670 a year, or $24.36 an hour (US Bureau of Labor Statistics).

49. Clerk jobs are projected to decline 6% from 2025 to 2035, a loss of 85,600. Turnover still creates about 144,100 openings a year (US Bureau of Labor Statistics).

50. Accountants and auditors held 1,595,200 jobs in 2025, at a median pay of $83,680. Their jobs are projected to grow 5% by 2035, with about 115,300 openings a year (US Bureau of Labor Statistics).

51. Accounting bachelor's and master's graduates fell to 55,152 in the 2023–24 academic year, down 6.6% (AICPA, 2025).

52. New CPA exam candidates fell to 28,082 in 2024, from 42,626 in 2023 (Journal of Accountancy, 2025).

53. Accounting enrollment rose 12.4% in spring 2025, to 266,506 students (Journal of Accountancy, 2025).

Late payments and working capital#

54. Overdue invoices affect 43% of credit-based B2B sales for US companies (Atradius Payment Practices Barometer, 2025).

55. Nearly 50% of US B2B sales are made on credit, with average payment terms of 45 days from invoicing (Atradius Payment Practices Barometer, 2025).

56. Days payable outstanding at the 1,000 largest US listed companies rebounded to 59 days, a 3% improvement, and the cash conversion cycle stands at 37 days (The Hackett Group, 2025).

57. The same companies hold $1.7 trillion in excess working capital, 35% of their gross working capital (The Hackett Group, 2025).

Putting these numbers in an AP business case#

Pick the benchmark that matches what you measure. If your cost per invoice includes staff, systems and overhead, compare it with APQC's $6.00 median and Ardent's $9.84 average, and say which one you used. If you only time invoices from receipt to approval, compare with APQC's 5.0 days, not the 15.0 days to payment.

Then measure your own exception rate for a month before you buy anything. It is the number that moves cost and cycle time together, and it's the one a vendor pilot should be judged on. The IDP ROI guide shows how to turn it into savings.

To try it on your own invoices, book a demo or start a free trial.

Frequently asked questions#