Five of these twelve clear themselves. Seven do not, and three should never clear automatically.
A payment run is not a queue of invoices. It is a set of decisions about which ones release without a person, and the reasons are not interchangeable: a missing receipt is a fact to enter, an invoice against no purchase order is money committed without approval, and a changed bank account is the most exploited step in accounts payable. This books the run, prices what each hold costs while it sits there, and keeps the kinds of hold apart.
SimulationThe invoices, the suppliers and the amounts are written for this demonstration, and the decisioning is real code running in your browser. Nothing is connected to an accounting system and no payment is made. The production build reads the ledger, applies the same separation of fact from decision, and hands the run to a payment house with the exceptions attached.
The ledger
Aurelia Software
control- Invoice
- AS-2026-14
- Amount
- $44,000
- Due
- in 5 days
Why it stopped
Bank details changed recently
What clears it
The new account has to be verified with a person at the supplier on a channel the supplier already used. This is the single most exploited step in accounts payable.
What the hold costs
- Held past due
- $19
- Discount at risk
- none
- Credit risk
- 7 days
This is a control, not a delay. Money leaving without it cleared is the failure the hold exists to prevent, so it never releases automatically.
How the desk decides
What it separates
- A fact to enter, like a receipt or a tax code, clears itself once it is entered.
- A decision to take, like a price variance or spend without an order, does not.
- A control, like a changed bank account or a possible duplicate, never clears automatically whatever the paperwork says.
- A supplier on stop overrides all of it, because that is credit control's call rather than accounts payable's.
What it counts
- The cost of holding, small before the due date and compounding after it.
- The settlement discount, real money with a deadline rather than a rounding difference.
- Supplier credit, because a late payment is repaid across every future order.
- An agreed deduction, so the run proposes the net payment rather than the face value.
What it does not claim
- It does not detect fraud. It makes sure the steps where it happens are not automated.
- It does not approve spend. It identifies what someone else has to approve.
- It does not read an arbitrary ledger. The invoices are written for this demonstration.
- It does not move money and is connected to no accounting system.
The eight hold reasons
- Three way match, a lookup
- No receipt recorded, a lookup
- Tax treatment differs, a lookup
- Price differs from the order, a decision
- Above the tolerance band, a decision
- No purchase order, a control
- Possible duplicate, a control
- Bank details changed recently, a control