transactions
trading vessels
in payments processed
connected suppliers
What's in the guide
The two bosses problem in maritime AP
Why different reporting lines for procurement and finance creates a structural control gap, and why that's a problem.
Five places financial exposure accumulates
A directional cost model showing how small accepted variances compound across a fleet.
Four operational scenarios where standard maritime AP workflows break down
Partial deliveries, vessel-side discrepancies, fleet-wide service agreements and hard-to-catch duplicates.
Two things to take into Monday's meeting
A workflow audit table and KPI scorecard to help assess your current processes and build your business case for change.
"When we conducted an internal audit of our processes we found that around 15% of our superintendent and technical managers' time was spent in email threads looking at invoicing related queries."
Transformation lead at an established ship management company
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Invoice management and AP automation for maritime — closing the control gap in your Procure-to-Pay process
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Maritime compliance: from fragmentation to shared infrastructure
How is maritime AP automation different from generic AP automation?
Maritime AP automation handles workflows that generic tools weren't designed for: vessel confirmation as a matching dimension, partial deliveries against the same PO across multiple shipments, fleet-wide service invoices where the line count exceeds the scope, multi-entity group structures with shared suppliers, and supplier qualification checks running continuously rather than once at onboarding. Generic tools can be configured around these. Maritime-built solutions handle them natively.
How long does manual invoice processing take in maritime AP?
For a typical ship manager, around 50 invoices arrive per vessel per month. Each takes roughly 10 minutes of loaded team time to clear — receive, match, chase vessel confirmation, query suppliers, resolve exceptions, rework in the ERP, route approvals. Across a 200-vessel fleet, that's around 1,667 hours every month, or close to 20,000 hours a year. Roughly ten full-time equivalents spread across AP, procurement, and operations, dedicated to invoice work.
What is 4-way matching in maritime accounts payable?
The market standard is three-way matching: purchase order, invoice, and delivery note. 4-way matching adds vessel confirmation as a fourth dimension. The receipt of goods is signed off by the vessel before the invoice clears. This matters in maritime AP because delivery notes are signed at the berth, but shortfalls surface days later at sea.
How does AP automation handle vessel confirmation in maritime invoice matching?
Generic AP tools match the purchase order, supplier delivery note, and invoice. Maritime AP needs a fourth: vessel confirmation that goods arrived as described. Without it, the invoice can clear before the vessel inventories the delivery, and any shortfall becomes a recovery process against a payment already gone out. A maritime-built workflow holds invoice clearance until vessel confirmation is in.
Where should compliance checks sit in a procure-to-pay workflow?
Compliance checks need to operate continuously inside the workflow rather than as separate steps around it. Sanctions screening should run before each payment release, because supplier risk changes faster than onboarding-time checks can catch. Bank account changes should trigger a verification check before the next payment runs — this is where most supplier fraud cycles begin. Vendor qualification status should be reassessed against current data each time the supplier is paid.
What should ship managers look for in procure-to-pay software?
The questions that separate a maritime-built solution from a generic one cover workflow handling for vessel-side discrepancies, traceability from PO through to settled payment, support for email-submitted supplier invoices, compliance placement inside the payment workflow (not bolted on around it), exception routing with confidence-scored reasoning, and bank account change detection before each payment run.
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