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Year-End Planning: The 4 Reports I’d Ask My AP Team for in September
By: Daniel Shore
Everyone cleans up their books in December. AP absorbs it.
When I ran AP, I learned the hard way that waiting until November to prepare for year-end was too late. The December rush was so predictable. The same business units pushed through late purchases. The same suppliers had unresolved balances. Old exceptions suddenly became urgent. Managers who had ignored invoices for weeks finally woke up on 12/20.
So in September, I wanted four reports from my team. I wanted to know where December was likely to hurt while we still had time.
1. Last December’s Invoice Volume by Cost Center and Requester
Don't start with total invoice volume. Take last December and compare invoice volume by cost center, business unit and, where possible, individual requester against a normal month such as October. You're looking for concentration.
Which groups suddenly sent AP substantially more invoices? Which managers consistently waited until year-end? Which suppliers are associated with those spikes? Were invoices submitted late, or did the purchases occur late?
Management question: Where did last year's year-end surge actually come from?
Once you know that, AP can have a very different conversation with those managers in September than it can on December 20.
2. Supplier Statements and Unreconciled Balances
December is a bad time to discover that a major supplier thinks you owe $180,000 more than your open vouchers. Pick your largest or most strategically important suppliers. Request statements and reconcile before year-end pressure builds. Look for missing invoices, unapplied credits, duplicates, disputed charges.
Management question: Which supplier balances are most likely to become December escalations?
I started with the top 20 suppliers and expanded from there based what I found.
3. Open Exceptions by Age, Value and Owner
For year-end planning, the exception count isn't enough. I want to know which exceptions are aging, how much money is tied up in them and—most importantly—who has the next action. Break your backlog into useful aging buckets and identify the owner: AP, Purchasing, Receiving, the business requester or the supplier.
Then look for concentration. This is also where my backlog sometimes fooled me. My AP team was processing new invoices efficiently which hid the unresolved problems underneath.
Management question: What's sitting unresolved today that could still be sitting there in December?
September gives you time to escalate systematically.
4. Last Year's Late Submitters and Approvers
Go back to last year's cutoff period and identify the departments and managers responsible for invoices, POs or approvals that arrived after your year-end deadlines. The “last minute Lucy’s” was my most useful report. Compare LML’s with prior years if you have the data. You’ll find repeat offenders.
Sending everyone another reminder about cutoff dates—treats every manager as an LML and reduces your credibility.
Of course – publish your year-end dates early, but pay attention to where history says you'll need it. A conversation with a habitual late submitter in September is considerably more useful than the fourth reminder email.
Management question: Who already has a track record of making year-end harder?
What I’d Do With the Four Reports
You're looking for intersections: a business unit that drove last year's volume spike, has old exceptions today, buys heavily from a supplier with an unreconciled balance, and has a manager who missed last year's cutoff. That's your year-end risk list.
It also gives finance leadership something much more useful than a generic year-end checklist. You can assign owners, escalate chronic problems, reconcile critical suppliers and talk to high-risk business units months before anyone decides their invoice is an emergency.
My goal: make December boring.
3 min
My goal: make December boring.
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