Vendor onboarding—the missing piece of the accounts payable puzzle
Vendor onboarding is often a hidden bottleneck in the accounts payable (AP) process. Left unaddressed, AP professionals spend weeks chasing down banking information and signed forms in order to establish vendors for payment. This manual system sets the pace for invoice processing and payment timeliness—a slow one. For many organizations, this process still relies on an old-fashioned approach using emails, spreadsheets, and PDFs, which can stretch setup times to multiple weeks, significantly delaying the first vendor payment.
By shifting to a NetSuite-native, automated workflow to onboard new vendors, finance teams can transform this administrative burden into a strategic advantage.
Driving efficiency through automation and native workflows
The primary goal of a modern onboarding process is to create a reliable, repeatable workflow that produces payment-ready vendor records from the very start of your official vendor relationship. Efficiency is gained by eliminating back-and-forth communications, creating a significant time delay and opening your organization and your vendor up to fraud through business email compromise.
Key efficiency drivers include:
- Eliminating manual data entry: Automated email to your vendors can populate NetSuite records directly from vendor submissions, removing the need for AP staff to re-key data and reducing the risk of human error.
- Security for your vendors: Vendors don’t want to send sensitive financial information over email; an official form directly from NetSuite establishes your organization as a secure entity with a higher level of trust.
- Customizations for your business: Solve for the specific pain points your organization is feeling with customizable solutions; for example, you can include your terms and conditions with vendor onboarding to get everything done at once.
- Rapid activation: Organizations can achieve up to an 80% reduction in vendor setup time, moving vendors from “requested” to “approved” in days rather than weeks.
Strengthening vendor relationships by removing friction
A vendor’s first interaction with your finance team sets the tone for the entire relationship. One of the biggest sources of strain? Delayed first payments due to onboarding hurdles.
To improve the vendor experience, Advanced Vendor Onboarding offers the following:
- A portal-free experience: Forcing vendors to create new accounts, manage passwords, or learn complex portals creates friction. A portal-free experience—where vendors complete secure forms via email—improves response rates and reduce IT support tickets.
- One-click invites: Starting the process with just a name and email address allows AP to move quickly, making the experience seamless for the vendor.
- Payment readiness: Capturing domestic and international payment details early ensures that the first payment is made on time, avoiding “emergency” requests that frustrate both vendors and staff.
Securing data and mitigating fraud risk
Vendor onboarding is fundamentally a controls and security problem. Collecting sensitive banking details or tax IDs over unencrypted email is a significant security risk and a top vector for payment fraud.
Modern security standards require:
- Encrypted data collection: High-risk data, such as banking details and TINs, should be collected via secure, SOC 2 Type 2 compliant forms and stored using encryption.
- Secure change governance: Any updates to vendor banking information must be governed by secure, approval-driven workflows inside NetSuite to prevent misdirected payments.
- Fraud-reduction controls: Implementing two-factor authentication and secure communication links protects the integrity of the vendor’s data.
- Master data integrity: Using duplicate vendor detection ensures clean records as the network scales, preventing operational noise and reporting confusion.
By focusing on these three pillars, finance teams can move faster without giving up control, ensuring that the AP function remains “cleaner, calmer,” and highly secure.
