AP Cash Planning: plan and prepare weekly supplier payments

AP Cash Planning helps Accounts Payable teams decide which open bills to pay in each forecast week. Versa suggests weekly targets and bill payments, while users keep control over priorities, payment timing, partial payments, and exceptions.

After a forecast is confirmed, its weekly AP plan becomes the planned outflow used by Cashflow Projection after the next Pulse refresh. When payment time arrives, a confirmed week can prepare an unposted Payment Disbursement Batch for review and posting.

Who can use AP Cash Planning?

• The company must have the AP Planning feature.
• The user must also have the AP Planning permission.
• Accounts Payable access is required to create or change forecasts and prepare payment batches.
• Ops Center Admin access is additionally required to confirm and lock a forecast.

Planning is always limited to the entity selected after sign in. Ask your administrator if the menu or an action is not available.

Where to find it

1. Sign in and select your company entity.
2. Open Bills.
3. Select AP Cash Planning.

Use Bills → AP Planning Settings to choose the normal forecast horizon from 1 to 12 weeks.

Create and review a forecast

1. Select New Forecast, choose a start date and forecast horizon, then create the forecast.
2. Review each week's Cashflow suggestion, Target, and Generated plan.
3. Use View payments under a weekly total to see which bills make up that amount.
4. Review the Cash impact section to compare the draft plan with the captured Cashflow Projection baseline, cash reserve, and available payment room.
5. Adjust targets or bill payments as needed. Saving a target does not change payments until you select Regenerate Schedule.

Common planning actions

• Replace suggested payment changes a suggested amount and date. Enter zero to remove that suggestion.
• Add Payment adds another installment for the selected bill.
• Split Payment divides the current open balance into one payment per selected consecutive week.
• Defer payment removes the bill's current payments and records a follow-up date after the forecast period. It does not automatically choose a replacement bill.
• Critical suppliers gives due or overdue bills from selected suppliers priority. It does not schedule their bills before the due date.

Confirm the plan and update Cashflow Projection

1. Have an authorized reviewer select Confirm Forecast.
2. The forecast becomes locked. Create a revision if the plan later needs to change.
3. After the next Pulse refresh, Cashflow Projection uses the confirmed AP amount for every covered week and identifies the confirmed plan as its source.

Confirmation does not pay bills. It locks the planning decision and changes the source used by a later Cashflow Projection refresh.

Prepare and post payments

1. Open a confirmed AP cash forecast.
2. Find the week you are ready to execute and select Prepare Payments.
3. Under Include scheduled payments through, keep the selected week only or choose a later week. A later selection includes every week from the starting week through that week; it never includes an earlier week.
4. Review the planned, already prepared, and remaining amounts for the selected weeks.
5. Choose the Cash account and Payment method. Review the proposed payment date, reference number, and discount setting.
6. Select Create Payment Batch. Versa rechecks each bill's status, open balance, currency, and other draft-batch reservations before creating an unposted batch.
7. In the Payment Disbursement Batch editor, review the selected bills and gross amounts. You may remove bills or change allowed amounts before saving.
8. Continue through the existing batch review and Post Batch process when the payment is approved.

All bills included in one batch use the payment date on the form. If you include future forecast weeks, their payments may therefore be recorded as early compared with the confirmed plan.

Preparing a batch does not post accounting entries, reduce bill balances, send a bank file, or refresh Cashflow Projection. The forecast immediately shows the draft batch and prepared amount. Posting requests forecast reconciliation; the next Pulse refresh updates the persisted Cashflow Projection after reconciliation.

If a bill is already reserved in another unposted batch, Versa does not add it twice and provides the existing batch for review. If a bill balance has decreased, the prepared amount is limited to the current balance. Bills in another currency require a compatible cash account and may be prepared in a separate batch.

Understand payment execution status

• Not prepared — No active payment batch contains the planned amount.
• Partially prepared — Only part of the planned amount is reserved in a batch.
• Draft batch — The prepared amount is in an unposted Payment Disbursement Batch.
• Batch posted — The linked batch has posted a payment.
• Payment voided — A linked posted payment was voided.
• Paid outside forecast batch — Reconciliation found payment activity that was not posted through a linked forecast batch.

Deleting an unposted batch or removing one of its bills releases that prepared amount so it can be prepared again. Deleting a forecast does not delete, void, or post its separate payment batches.

Related features and what remains unchanged

• Cashflow Projection uses confirmed weekly AP totals after a Pulse refresh.
• Payment Disbursement Batches remain the accounting review and posting workflow. Existing payment permissions, bank output, cheque, EFT, and remittance controls are unchanged.
• The optional AP Cash Planning Agent monitors Must Pay bills in Ops Center. It is not required to create or use forecasts.

If you do not see an expected option

• AP Cash Planning is missing — Confirm both the company feature and your user permission are enabled, and verify the correct entity is selected.
• Confirm Forecast is missing — Confirmation requires Ops Center Admin access.
• Prepare Payments is missing — The forecast must be confirmed, the week must have an amount left to prepare, and you need Accounts Payable access.
• A bill was not prepared — Review the message for a paid or closed bill, changed open balance, currency mismatch, or another draft payment batch.

Tips

• Use the payment-week filter to focus on the bill detail behind one weekly total.
• Lower the weekly target as well as deferring a bill when you intend to reduce that week's spending goal.
• Review the cash account, method, date, discounts, bills, and amounts every time before posting a prepared batch.