Streamlining your payment processes: Why automating both AP and AR matters

As new technologies and products emerge, more businesses and banks are choosing to offer both account payables (AP) and accounts receivable (AR) automation solutions together. In a recent webinar with industry analysts Strategic Treasurer, John Rubinetti, president of B2B payments at Deluxe, explored the benefits, opportunities and implementation strategies when modernizing both AP and AR processes in an integrated way. 

Benefits of modern AP and AR processing

Craig Jeffery, managing partner at Strategic Treasurer, kicked off the conversation with an introduction to the benefits of automating not just AP or AR, but the specific benefits that come from modernizing both. Rubinetti pointed out that in recent years, 70% of all small business and mid-market companies still report they don’t have an automated AP or AR solution.

Offering AP and AR automation solutions together leads to several benefits:

• Improved cash flow
• Reduced manual processes
• Better use of working capital
• Enhanced data access and analysis
• Faster processing times
• Helps to lower security risk and manual error

As mid-market companies aim to close that gap and modernize their finances, most are choosing to automate both AP and AR to reduce manual error, streamline their operations and lower administrative costs. The joint AP and AR  automation market is expected to grow to $2.61 billion in 2025, reflecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.6%, according to The Business Research Company.

Automation implications to consider

Rubinetti’s advice is for financial institutions and businesses to look at several areas, such as existing number of processes, number of people involved in those processes, and number of places where information is stored, to determine the most valuable areas and the most critical pain points to automate.

Key questions to ask:

• Where is the most value?
• Where are my common pain points?
• What is the opportunity?
• Where are the restrictions or limitations?
• How scalable are these solutions? 

Many businesses face resource restrictions and IT limitations when adding functionality to their existing processes. According to the 2025 AP Automation Readiness Survey, 75% of respondents said “reducing manual processes” was their most significant pain point, followed closely by “protecting against fraud” at 56%.

When choosing your AP and AR automation solutions, there are several considerations to keep in mind: 

• Vendor and client relationships
• Liquidity/cost of capital
• Working capital management
• Scalability
• Efficiency

Implementation and activation 

Jeffery and Rubinetti stressed the importance of looking at the entire payment process, not just part with the advice, “optimizing part of the process suboptimizes the whole.” By focusing on the entire end-to-end-to-end process and meeting the needs for both AP and AR automation, you can see the benefits of modern finance throughout your entire payment ecosystem.

Beyond implementation, Rubinetti shares that its crucial to make sure that the transformation is fully realized. Companies and financial institutions can do this by ensuring that they are leveraging the power of a payment network. With this approach, the value of each module is fully realized more quickly because you implement the platform once and activate each module when you are ready. A payment platform helps alleviate time and resource constraints.