What the Great Pumpkin Can Teach AP and Finance Leaders About Automation

Every Halloween, Linus van Pelt heads to the pumpkin patch and waits. And waits. And waits.

In the classic television special It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, Linus is convinced that the Great Pumpkin will rise from the sincerest pumpkin patch and deliver presents to children around the world. His friends are skeptical. Sally initially joins him as Halloween night passes and the Great Pumpkin never arrives.

For accounts payable (AP)The amount a company owes to suppliers for goods and services received but not yet paid. leaders, there may be a surprisingly useful lesson hiding in Linus’ pumpkin patch: Hope is not an automation strategy.

Many finance organizations have spent years waiting for AP transformation to arrive. They have digitized invoices. Added electronic approvals. Introduced electronic payments. Built integrations. Created spreadsheets to bridge gaps. Added portals. Layered new technology onto old technology. Yet AP employees are still entering data, chasing approvals, resolving exceptions manually, answering supplier inquiries, uploading payment files, and reconciling transactions. Sound familiar?

This Halloween, perhaps it is time to stop waiting for the Great Pumpkin and start asking whether your invoice-to-pay strategy is delivering the results your organization needs.

Lesson 1: Don’t Confuse Belief with Results

Nobody believes in the Great Pumpkin more than Linus. His conviction is admirable. But conviction alone doesn’t produce results.

The same can be true of AP automation. An organization may genuinely believe it has automated accounts payable because it has implemented several technologies. But having automation and achieving automation are two different things.

Consider the complete invoice-to-pay lifecycle. How do invoices arrive? Is invoice data still entered or corrected manually? How are invoices coded and routed? What happens when something doesn’t match? How much time does AP spend chasing approvals? How are suppliers enrolled for electronic payments? How are payments executed? How are transactions reconciled? How do suppliers find out the status of invoices and payments?

Manual work hiding anywhere on that journey can create friction somewhere else. That is why AP leaders should measure automation by outcomes rather than technology deployed.

• Are there fewer manual touches?
• Are invoices processed faster?
• Is AP spending less time on exceptions?
• Are suppliers paid more efficiently?
• Has visibility improved?
• Is reconciliationThe process of matching financial records—such as payments and invoices—to ensure accuracy in accounting and reporting. easier?
• Is fraud risk better controlled?

Technology is the means. The outcome is what matters.

Lesson 2: Don’t Spend Another Year Waiting

Linus doesn’t just wait for the Great Pumpkin once. He comes back the next year convinced that this will finally be the year.

There is another lesson for AP leaders. Organizations can become remarkably comfortable with processes that everyone knows are inefficient.

• “We’ve always done it this way.”
• “Our ERP can’t handle that.”
• “That spreadsheet works fine.”
• “We’ll address payments next year.”
• “We automated invoices already.”
• “We just need to add another integration.”

Meanwhile, employees continue compensating for gaps with manual effort.

The danger is that workarounds eventually become part of the process. Employees learn which spreadsheet contains the right information, which approver needs an extra email, which supplier requires special handling, and which system needs information re-entered. Eventually, everyone stops questioning why the workaround exists.

Don’t wait another year for those problems to disappear. They won’t.

Lesson 3: Don’t Mistake One Pumpkin for the Whole Patch

One of the biggest mistakes organizations make with AP automation is focusing on an individual task rather than the entire invoice-to-pay process.

Automating invoice capture is valuable. So is electronic approval. So are electronic payments. But automating individual steps does not necessarily create an automated process.

Imagine an invoice that is captured electronically but requires an employee to correct the data. It then moves through an automated workflow until an exception forces AP to research the issue across multiple systems. Once approved, information is exported to another platform for payment. An employee uploads a payment file. The transaction is later reconciled manually. Several parts of that process are technically “automated.” The experience isn’t.

The better approach is to examine invoice-to-pay as one connected lifecycle, from invoice receipt and processing through approval, payment, reconciliationThe process of matching financial records—such as payments and invoices—to ensure accuracy in accounting and reporting., reporting, and supplier visibility. The objective should be to eliminate friction between those steps, not simply optimize each one independently.

Lesson 4: Be Wary of ‘the Football’

The Great Pumpkin isn’t the only recurring lesson in the special. Charlie Brown once again believes Lucy will hold the football for him to kick. We know how that turns out.

AP leaders should bring a little Charlie Brown skepticism to technology promises. Every solution sounds impressive in a demonstration. The most useful questions are what happens when technology encounters the messy realities of your AP operation.

• Can it accommodate the ways your suppliers send invoices?
• Can it integrate with your existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) system or accounting environment?
• Can it handle the payment methods your suppliers want?
• What happens when an invoice doesn’t match?
• How are exceptions resolved?
• Can you see what is happening across the entire process?
• What controls help protect payments?
• Can suppliers find answers without calling AP?
• And what happens when transaction volumes suddenly spike?

The goal isn’t to become cynical about automation. It is to evaluate technology based on how well it addresses the real-world conditions your AP team encounters every day. Otherwise, you may find yourself flat on your back wondering how you fell for the same promise again.

Lesson 5: The Best Automation Frees You to Join the Party

While Linus and Sally sit in the pumpkin patch, the other kids are out enjoying Halloween. There is an AP parallel here, too.

Highly skilled AP professionals shouldn’t spend their days performing work that technology can handle. They shouldn’t have to key invoice data. They shouldn’t spend hours chasing approvals. They shouldn’t have to manually shepherd every payment. They shouldn’t spend their afternoons responding to routine, “Where’s my payment?” emails. And they shouldn’t have to piece together information from multiple systems just to understand the status of a transaction.

AP professionals have far more valuable things to contribute. They can analyze spending. Build supplier relationships. Improve working capital. Identify process improvements. Fortify controls. Reduce fraud exposure.  Help finance make better decisions.

Automation shouldn’t simply help AP process more transactions. It should give AP professionals more time to do work that matters.

Lesson 6: Look for More Than Efficiency

Here is where AP leaders can go one step beyond the traditional automation conversation. The question shouldn’t only be, “How much manual work can we eliminate?” It should also be, “How much more value can AP create?”

An integrated invoice-to-pay strategy can help organizations process invoices more efficiently, improve visibility into spending and cash requirements, strengthen payment controls, pay suppliers through their preferred methods, and simplify reconciliationThe process of matching financial records—such as payments and invoices—to ensure accuracy in accounting and reporting.. Payment strategy can create additional opportunities. Organizations may be able to better control payment timing, capture early-payment discounts, and generate cash-back rebates on qualifying virtual cardA single-use or vendor-specific digital payment card used in B2B payments to improve control, visibility, and rebate potential. W payments.

That changes the business case.

AP automation stops being solely about reducing the cost of processing an invoice. It becomes an opportunity to automate, optimize, and monetize invoice-to-pay. And that helps shift AP from a back-office cost center toward a more strategic contributor to the business.

This Halloween, Leave the Waiting to Linus

There is something endearing about Linus’ unwavering belief that the Great Pumpkin is finally going to appear. It is less endearing when an AP department spends years waiting for manual processes, disconnected systems, and fragmented automation to somehow fix themselves. They won’t.

AP transformation requires looking beyond individual technologies and examining the complete invoice-to-pay lifecycle.

• Where is manual work hiding?
• Where do systems disconnect?
• Where do exceptions pile up?
• Where does visibility disappear?
• Where are payment processes fragmented?
• And where could automation create additional financial value?

Edenred PayEdenred Pay is the market leader in B2B payments automation. helps organizations address those questions with an integrated platform that spans invoice processing, approvals, supplier payments, reconciliationThe process of matching financial records—such as payments and invoices—to ensure accuracy in accounting and reporting., reporting, and supplier visibility. Instead of automating another isolated task, organizations can connect invoice-to-pay from beginning to end, reducing manual work, strengthening controls, improving visibility, optimizing payments, and creating opportunities to deliver measurable value back to the business.

So, this Halloween, enjoy It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Enjoy the costumes. Enjoy the candy. Enjoy the pumpkin patch. But when it comes to AP transformation, don’t sit around waiting for the Great Pumpkin. Build an invoice-to-pay process that delivers.