When Knowledge Walks Out the Door

Solving the Accounts Payable Turnover Crisis

Thanks to my friends at MakersHub for sharing this article.

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Employee turnover is a reality of business. Whether it's an amicable departure or a disgruntled exit, losing an employee—especially in a critical operational role like accounts payable (AP)—can create significant disruptions. Why? Because these employees often take with them the intricate, undocumented knowledge of vendor relationships, payment coding, and workflow nuances, leaving the company scrambling to fill in the gaps.

This blog delves into the challenges of knowledge loss in accounts payable, its measurable impact on organizations, and how technology can solve this all-too-common problem.

The True Cost of Employee Turnover in Accounts Payable

The accounts payable department is a critical cog in any business's financial machine. It ensures that vendors are paid on time, expenses are properly tracked, and financial processes run smoothly. But when an experienced AP specialist leaves, it’s not just a position that becomes vacant—it’s a repository of vendor-specific knowledge that vanishes.

Quantifying the Cost

Here’s what happens when an AP employee departs:

1. Training a New Hire is Time-Intensive

Research shows that a new hire takes an average of 3 to 6 months to become fully productive. New employees spend countless hours seeking information and acclimating to vendor processes during this time. According to HR Daily Advisor, this inefficiency can total up to 200 hours of wasted time per employee during the onboarding process.

2. Knowledge Retention is Rare

Studies on memory retention, such as those based on the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve, indicate that individuals forget up to 79% of newly learned information within a month, with only about 20% retained long-term (Inkling). This steep decline in retention during knowledge transfer can result in delayed payments, coding errors, and frustrated vendors, creating significant inefficiencies in accounts payable.

3. Financial Penalties Add Up

Mistakes in the AP process can have a direct financial impact:

• Late payments lead to penalties or damaged vendor relationships.

• Missed opportunities for early-payment discounts cost companies up to 1-2% of invoice totals. (Fit Small Business)

• Errors like duplicate payments or miscodings inflate operational costs unnecessarily.

The Added Risk of Disgruntled Departures

Now consider a scenario where the departing employee is disgruntled. The risks multiply:

• Withholding Critical Knowledge: In a malicious departure, an employee might intentionally skip transferring vital details about vendor payment terms or workflows.

• Operational Disruptions: Without clear instructions, the new hire may struggle to process bills or manage vendor expectations.

• Security Threats: If the employee retains access to systems after leaving, there’s a risk of unauthorized transactions or data breaches, which could cost companies millions in financial losses and reputational damage.

Transforming Knowledge into Process

Rather than depending on individuals to manage vendor intricacies and payment workflows manually, technology can help you ensure consistency and efficiency by:

1. Learning over time thanks to built-in intelligence

Advanced automation and AI can learn your AP processes as you work. Each vendor interaction adds to the platform’s understanding, creating a digital repository of rules and behaviors. As technology evolves with you, it reduces the need for manual intervention and retains institutional knowledge within the system.

2. Using rule-based automation for consistency

Integration mapping is similar to the bank rules feature in QuickBooks—but on steroids. You can establish specific guidelines for how each vendor’s invoice line items, customers/jobs, classes, and items should be handled, ensuring a consistent, error-free process every time. This automation eliminates the need for a new employee to master each vendor’s unique requirements.

3. Simplifying Onboarding

The onboarding process is exponentially easier when the AP team gains a new member. Rather than downloading a mental encyclopedia from their predecessor, the new hire simply learns how to use the technology. This streamlining can cut onboarding time by weeks, saving hundreds of hours of productivity.

Reducing Risk and Increasing Productivity

Technology comes with a host of additional benefits including:

• Error Reduction: Automation ensures invoices are coded accurately, eliminating duplicate payments and other costly errors.

• Compliance Assurance: By standardizing workflows, the risk of non-compliance with internal or regulatory requirements is reduced.

• Vendor Relationship Management: Automated payments and consistent processes keep vendors happy, maintaining strong partnerships.

And for those worried about disgruntled departures? Technology ensures that no single employee holds the keys to your AP kingdom.

Why This Matters for Your Business

Every business will face employee turnover at some point. The key is preparing for it in a way that minimizes disruptions and protects your operations. In accounts payable, where the stakes include vendor relationships, cash flow management, and operational continuity, the cost of being unprepared is simply too high.

Use technology to transform knowledge from something stored in employees’ minds into a digital asset that stays with the organization. It’s not just a smart way to manage AP—it’s a safeguard against the inevitable churn of the modern workforce.

Knowledge loss in accounts payable can be a silent killer of productivity and efficiency. But it doesn’t have to be. Empower your businesses to future-proof operations by embedding institutional knowledge into its platform.

When your AP processes are streamlined, automated, and centralized in a technology solution that evolves with your needs, employee departures become far less daunting. Your team can focus on growing the business, confident that no critical details are slipping through the cracks.