AP & AR Management
Bills captured at the source, approvals with guardrails, invoices out on time and collected. Cash flows in both directions on a fixed rhythm — without the owner chasing it.
Why AP & AR is where cash actually moves
The P&L is a scoreboard; AP and AR are the field where cash actually moves. An invoice sent three weeks after the job is an interest-free loan to your customer — and most small businesses make that loan every month without noticing. On the other side, unmanaged payables cost you one of two ways: late fees and strained vendors, or bills paid the day they arrive and float you never had to give up.
The goal is flow. Cash should move through the business the way work-in-process moves through a well-run floor: no piles, no waiting. And waiting is the most expensive waste in a back office — the owner approving bills at 10pm, the invoice batch that goes out "when things calm down," the payment sitting unapplied because nobody matched it. Every one of those queues is cash standing still.
There's also the control angle a buyer or lender sees immediately: one AP clerk means no segregation of duties. The same person enters the bill, approves it, and pays it — a finding on every diligence checklist. A firm gives you built-in segregation: preparation, review, and approval sit with different people by design, not by hope.
What's included
- Bill capture at the source via Ramp & QuickBooks Online — receipts and invoices attach themselves
- Approval workflows with spending guardrails by vendor, amount, and category
- Weekly payment runs prepared for one-click owner approval
- Vendor management: W-9s on file, terms tracked, no duplicate vendors
- Customer invoicing on a fixed cadence — same day, every cycle
- Collections follow-up with a documented dunning rhythm
- Unapplied-payment & credit-memo hygiene, so the AR aging tells the truth
- AR & AP aging reviewed monthly as part of the close
How Kaizen runs it
The stack is QuickBooks Online plus Ramp, configured so data is captured at the source instead of keyed in after the fact. Bills arrive by email or card and code themselves against rules; the manual entry an AP clerk would spend their day on mostly shouldn't exist. You keep payment authority the whole way: we prepare the run, you click approve.
Then the part that makes it durable: Standardize — invoicing dates, dunning steps, and payment-run day are written down and run the same way regardless of who executes — and Sustain — a monthly aging review with the close, so the cadence doesn't decay when things get busy. Collections that happen every week beat collections that happen when someone remembers.
Pricing
Frequently asked questions
Do you take over payment authority?
No — and that's deliberate. We prepare payment runs inside approval guardrails; the owner approves with one click. Segregation of duties is the point: the people who prepare payments are never the people who release them.
Can you do just AP, or just AR?
Yes — either side runs standalone. Most clients start with the side that hurts, which is usually collections, and add the other once the first rhythm is running.
How do you collect from customers without damaging the relationship?
A documented, polite dunning cadence beats sporadic angry calls every time. Consistency, monthly statements, and a payment link in every touch do most of the work — customers pay the vendor who invoices predictably and follows up professionally.
What systems do you use?
QuickBooks Online plus Ramp for spend management. Payments ride your existing bank rails — we prepare and track, we don't touch your money.
Related services
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