The Modern Nonprofit AP Playbook: Strengthening Your Process

Tuesday, March 31, 2026 by Jon Osterburg, co-written with our friends at Bill.com

Operational inefficiencies are among the most impactful internal challenges facing today's nonprofits. According to Sage's 2025 Nonprofit Technology Impact Report, nonprofit financial leaders cite time-consuming manual processes and reporting as the top operational issues that affected their organizations throughout the 2020s.

These challenges are especially noticeable with accounts payable (AP) management. Across the nonprofit sector, AP processing takes an average of 64 hours from invoice creation to approval. This high number is mostly because many organizations still handle AP manually and place the responsibility on internal team members who don't have the necessary bandwidth or expertise for it.

Fortunately, your nonprofit can improve its AP processes with the right technology and professional support. But before we discuss those factors, let's dive deeper into the challenges of this process and what effective AP management looks like.

Common Nonprofit AP Challenges

Especially if your team is handling accounts payable manually and internally, you've likely run into problems with:

• Slow approval bottlenecks, which may cause your nonprofit to miss payment deadlines
• Misplaced documentation that leads to incomplete records and the potential for reporting noncompliance
• Increased errors that stem from team members scrambling to meet tight deadlines (not to mention the stress that comes with these time crunches!)

Not only do these issues make internal financial management less efficient and accurate, but they can also put a strain on your nonprofit's relationships with external vendors, making it more difficult to get what your organization needs to fulfill its mission.

Signs Your AP Process Needs a Refresh

Despite the major long-term impacts of many common AP challenges, they can be slow to manifest at your nonprofit and might seem like minor inconveniences at first. However, it's a commonly understood principle that the best risk management strategies are proactive, and navigating AP challenges is no exception.

Your organization should consider modifying its approach to AP if any of the following are true:

1. You realize that more team time is going toward AP management than other essential operational activities, such as strategy development or employee engagement.
2. Your nonprofit undergoes multiple independent financial audits over the course of a few years, and your auditors consistently find gaps in AP documentation.
3. Only one staff member is in charge of all AP activities at your organization, along with various other duties.
4. Vendors frequently reach out to your organization because they're wondering what happened to the payments you owe them.

Noticing these potential problems early and correcting them before they become detrimental to your nonprofit is essential for keeping all of your operations running smoothly, not just AP. And when your organization is operating smoothly, you have more time and resources available to serve your community.

Basics of an Effective Nonprofit AP Setup

Now that you know what not to do when it comes to accounts payable, you might be thinking about what you should do to make your process the best it can be. Your first step is to conduct an internal AP audit where your team (and an external financial professional, if you want an even more effective and objective audit) systematically analyzes your existing processes to identify strengths and areas for improvement.

Once you've reviewed your audit results, you can start to:

• Map out AP data movement to ensure the process is clear for staff and all systems integrate properly
• Clarify roles and responsibilities among your team for approving payments, recording transactions, analyzing data, etc.
• Centralize document storage in a secure system with limited access controls

When you roll out these updates, create a shared AP handbook or process guide that your team and any external professionals can reference as they adjust to their new and improved workflows.

Nonprofit AP Management Services & Software

As mentioned previously, improving your nonprofit's accounts payable processes is much easier with expert help and the right tools. Let's dive deeper into how Jitasa's nonprofit financial professionals can assist with AP management and how our partners at BILL can streamline your organization's workflows with an automated AP solution.

AP Management With Jitasa

Jitasa is the largest national provider of financial services designed exclusively for nonprofits. Many AP management tasks have always been part of Jitasa's core bookkeeping and accounting services, such as:

• Revenue and expense data entry and allocation
• Internal and external account reconciliation
• Accounting software migration and maintenance
• Chart of accounts setup and upkeep
• Audit preparation and implementation assistance for auditors' recommendations

As of 2025, Jitasa also has more specific AP offerings available through our new controller services. When your organization chooses this option, our experts will review your nonprofit's current AP process, design updated workflows that better meet your team's needs, and develop policies to ensure everyone who touches AP at your organization understands essential best practices.

AP Automation With BILL

BILL is a leading provider of accounts payable solutions and related financial operations software for organizations of all sizes across various industries. BILL's automated AP platform allows nonprofits like yours to:

• Streamline approval tracking, process approvals on the go, and communicate with other team members directly within the system so nothing falls through the cracks.
• Manage invoice and payment access to minimize risk through simplified segregation of duties and role-based user permissions.
• Submit payments with just a few clicks so your team doesn't have to scramble to meet vendors' deadlines or track down outstanding payments before audits.
• Leverage cutting-edge AI that automatically codes multi-line bills and checks invoices against receipts to save time and reduce errors.

BILL's platform is built on automation, meaning its goal is to speed up the AP process so you can get back to furthering your mission. And considering nonprofit users of BILL see an average time savings of 50% in their AP workflows, the solution delivers on its promises!

Accounts payable management can be time-consuming, resource-intensive, and stressful for your nonprofit, but with the right tools (like BILL) and expert assistance from financial professionals (like the team at Jitasa), it doesn't have to be. By prioritizing AP improvements now, you can minimize risk and maximize efficiency, team satisfaction, and impact in the long run.

Discover how Jitasa's affordable, scalable nonprofit controller services can work for your organization.

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