Accounts Payable Salary: What Should You Offer?

The accounts payable (AP) department plays a crucial role in the financial health of your company. The teams within this department work together to verify invoices, track outgoing payments, and ensure company accounts don’t go outstanding. But more than that, your accounts payable staff is key in having successful audits as well as preventing fraud.

To lock up the best accounts payable teams—and ensure they stick around—you need to offer a competitive salary.

But how can you make sure your offerings are competitive? This blog post will give you a breakdown of key AP duties and criteria to help you determine a salary range that attracts and retains talent.

What is Accounts Payable?

Accounts payable, also referred to as AP, is the department that manages a company’s financial obligations to suppliers, vendors, and creditors. Experts in this space are primarily responsible for:

Ensuring bills are paid on time
Accurately recording financial transations
Managing vendor relationships
Monitoring and tracking payments and other financial records

Put simply, the AP department accomplishes all the necessary steps to ensure that company accounts are paid and financial records are current.

Common Accounts Payable Roles and Duties

Roles within this department often involve a lot of clerical or administrative work, as well as some accounting duties. Accounts payable teams are typically responsible for bookkeeping, invoice research and verification, and issuing and tracking payments on behalf of the company.

Here’s a quick list of the many other things AP professional do to tackle their role:

Entering vendor information into the accounting system and maintaining vendor records
Reviewing and verifying invoices
Organizing and authorizing invoices for payment
Researching suspicious invoices and resolving discrepancies, if needed
Reviewing vendor statements and purchase orders
Processing credit memos
Helping vendors get set up in payment portals
Maintaining relationships with vendors for accurate and timely invoicing and payment processes

Reconciling past due account statements
Issuing payments to vendors

Steps to Offering a Competitve Accounts Payable Salary

As you can see, your accounts payable teams help to serve a vital function by maintaining and improving the financial health of your organization. And it takes numerous skills and tasks to accomplish this goal and protect your business from fruadulent, inaccurate, or unauthorized payments.

So, it’s important that you’re offering a salary that reflects their contribution to your company’s success and efficiency. To find the right accounts payable salary range, take a look at the following criteria:

Research the Market

Checking out the market for accounts payable professionals is important for two reasons:

This will give you a baseline for salary expectations. Looking at thenational market, as well as your local market will give you insight to what other companies are offering.

The market for accounts payable hiring will also give you an idea of how in-demand this role is. When certain positionsn or skill sets experience higher demand, you need to be prepared to offer a salary that helps your company stand out against other hiring managers.

Consider Location

There can be vast and sometimes extreme fluctuations in cost of living for different cities or states. So while the national median for an accounts payable role may be helpful, if you are hiring someone who lives in a city where cost of living is higher than the national average, then you should factor that into the salary offer.

Review Responsibilities and Experience

There’s never a one-size-fits all salary range. Rather, it should be reflective of the level of responsibilities and the experience a candidate brings to the team, in addition to the other criteria on this list.

So, consider the job responsibilities for the accounts payable position you’re hiring. If it’s a more senior role with more complex or sensitive tasks, you may need a higher salary offer to attract and retain qualified candidates.

Factor in Benefits and Bonuses

Salary is important, but benefits and bonuses are also key in attracting and retaining employees. And many people consider benefit packages—like health insurance or 401k—as part of their salary.

Consider offering a comprehensive package to make your offer more attractive and ensure existing talent stays with your company.

Be Flexible

Don’t miss out on a great candidate due to lack of flexibility. Negotiating is a common occurrence in the late stages of the interview process. Being flexible can help you secure the best talent for your accounts payable team, while offering a salary that reflects the candidate’s experience and skills.

Time to Rethink Your AP Salary?

A competitive salary can help attract top accounts payable talent, improve retention rates, and boost morale and motivation among your teams.

Just remember, there is no one-size-fits-all salary range. The main goal should be a range that reflects the specific needs of your business, the expertise of the candidate, and the value accounts payable teams bring to your company.

If you need some help finding accounts payable experts for your team, fill out the form below!