If you are heading into 2026 with flat headcount, rising invoice volumes, and pressure to “do more with less” in NetSuite, your accounts payable (AP) workflow is one of the fastest places to find real savings.
For many finance teams, the problem isn’t NetSuite itself, it’s the invisible cost of manual touchpoints that surround every single invoice and payment. You’re clicking into each invoice to review and route it, rekeying data that already lives elsewhere in NetSuite, downloading files, logging into external payment portals, then chasing approvals and payment status over email and chat. Each step seems small in isolation, but across thousands of invoices and payments, it adds up to real costs; extra headcount, higher error rates, slower close, and vendor frustration.
Here are four advancements in AP automation to further reduce friction, eliminate repetitive work, and give NetSuite users more control over their workflows.
In 2025, Charted AP Automation focused on one objective: eliminate manual touchpoints at every stage of the AP process, entirely within NetSuite. Our upcoming product recap webinar will walk through what changed this year—and how it sets you up to cut costs further in 2026.
Below are four practical ways NetSuite finance teams can reduce costs next year.
1. Turn invoice capture into Touchless Invoice Processing
Invoice entry is still one of the most expensive manual activities in AP. Even with basic OCR, many teams are correcting header and line-level fields, clicking through tab after tab to submit bills, and spending valuable time on invoices that are totally routine.
Charted Invoice Automation changes that. When using Invoice AI, the Touchless Invoice Processing feature now auto-creates bills for perfect 3-way matches when purchase order quantity, receipt quantity, and invoice quantity align. For trusted vendors such as utilities and recurring services, you can enable automatic bill creation when invoice patterns are consistent. All of these documents and processes stay inside NetSuite with complete audit trails and your existing approval workflows.
The result: Zero manual touchpoints for a significant share of your invoices, so your AP team focuses only on exceptions.
2. Consolidate global payments directly in NetSuite
Many NetSuite users still rely on external payment portals for international vendors. That means double entry between systems, manual reconciliation back into NetSuite, and limited visibility into fees and FX. With Charted Payment Automation, you can now pay vendors in 200+ countries directly from NetSuite—no external portals, no middleware, no duplicate records.
Payment approvals, execution, and remittance all live inside NetSuite, giving you unified workflows without the context-switching. Consolidated global payments can reduce processing costs by up to 60% compared to fragmented bank and portal workflows.
3. Accelerated ACH to avoid rush fees and fire drills
Last-minute payment requests create hidden costs—expedited wires, manual workarounds, and time lost chasing status updates. Accelerated ACH payments are designed to reduce that friction by consolidating payment queues into a single, unified workflow. Same-day or next-day settlement options (where supported) help you meet vendor expectations without defaulting to costly payment methods, while approval workflows stay in NetSuite so you maintain strong controls as you speed up execution.
4. Automate accruals to close faster, without extra headcount
Month-end close is another area where manual touchpoints quickly multiply. Whether exporting data to spreadsheets, manually calculating accruals by department or account, and re-keying journals back into NetSuite, the back-and-forth is compounded and can lead to costly errors. Charted Accrual Automation helps you use department-level filters to review and approve accruals faster, support more account types and scenarios without custom scripts, and generate automated journal entries with complete audit trails. These improvements support a clear objective: one system, faster close.
If your 2026 plan includes reducing AP costs in NetSuite—without adding another system to manage—our upcoming session is designed for you.
Register today to see how Charted AP Automation helps you cut costs, reclaim time, and turn AP into a strategic asset in 2026.
