7 min read
What invoice data entry actually costs you
Every AP automation vendor will tell you what you are spending. None of them know. The arithmetic takes about two minutes and the result is more persuasive than any benchmark, because it is yours.
The three numbers you need
- 1Bills a monthCount last month rather than estimating. Most people guess low by a third.
- 2Minutes to key oneTime yourself on five, start to finish — opening the email through to saving with the document attached. Not just the typing.
- 3Loaded hourly costSalary plus employer taxes, benefits and overhead. Not the hourly rate. For most US employers this is 1.25–1.4x base.
Multiply the first two, divide by sixty, multiply by the third. That is your monthly transcription cost — the floor, not the total.
Run it on your own numbers
Keying them by hand
$933/mo
33 hours a month of someone’s time.
AP Central, 2k
$95/mo
800 pages a month, on the plan that costs least for that volume.
That is $838 a month of time back, and the bills still get reviewed by a person.
Start freeYour numbers, not ours — move any slider. AP Central is billed by the page, so pages per bill is the one that decides your plan.
Nothing here is preloaded to flatter the answer — change every slider. Pages per bill matters more than people expect, because AP Central is billed by the page rather than by the invoice.
A worked example
A thirty-person company, four hundred bills a month, one part-time person handling AP. These are round numbers chosen to be easy to follow, not a case study.
- Bills a month
- 400
- Minutes per bill
- measured over five bills
- 4.5
- Hours a month
- 400 × 4.5 ÷ 60
- 30.0
- Loaded hourly cost
- $28.00
- Monthly transcription cost
- 30 × $28
- $840
- Pages a month
- averaging two pages per bill
- 800
- Cheapest AP Central plan at that volume
- the 2,000-page plan
- $95
The comparison that matters is not software against software. It is software against most of a half-time role — which is the version an owner signs the same week.
What the headline number leaves out
The direct labour figure only counts the work that goes right. The rest is where most of the real money is, and it is the part nobody has on a timesheet.
| Hidden cost | Where it shows up | How to size it |
|---|---|---|
| Rework | Bills corrected after posting | Count journal entries that only fix a prior AP posting |
| Duplicate payments | Vendor credits, or money never recovered | Group last year's bills by vendor and amount; look for repeats |
| Late fees and lost discounts | Vendor statements, terms not taken | Sum late charges for twelve months; add discounts offered but not taken |
| Vendor chasing | Time on calls about invoices never entered | Ask whoever fields those calls for an honest weekly hour count |
| A longer close | Days between period end and reporting | Compare your close to the days of AP backlog at period end |
| Unreal variances | Time investigating a spike that was a coding difference | Count the variance investigations that ended in “it was coded differently” |
Making the decision
- If you are about to hire for AP, the comparison is against a salary, not a subscription
- If your close is late because of an AP pile, the value is in days, not dollars
- If two people code the same vendor differently, the value is in your reports meaning something
- If none of those are true, your process is probably fine as it is
Last updated 2026-10-21.