Accounts Payable Handoff: A Clean Payment Run From a Half-Finished Queue

A desk that changes hands in the middle of the week

When an AP specialist goes on leave or moves to another team, the queue does not pause. There are draft entries keyed but never checked, invoices received but not dispositioned, vendors asked for a W-9 who have not replied, and a payment run due Friday under a cash cap treasury set on Monday. The handoff note covers most of it. The rest is in a mailbox.

Invoice PDFs sit in Box, entries in an Airtable AP table, the W-9 register and the disbursement policy in Google Drive, vendor mail in the shared AP mailbox on Outlook, and purchasing's questions in Gmail and Slack. The person picking up the desk should trust nothing they have not checked: a draft entry may carry a wrong amount, a vendor's new bank details may never have been verified, and an invoice flagged as a possible duplicate may still be sitting in the run.

Who works in the room

The AP desk has one Kylon room. Myco is the default agent, so a question about any invoice goes to it. Ryan owns payment runs, and anything about the cash cap or a run date reaches it without a mention. Fin reads the AP mailbox through the covering specialist's Outlook connection, checked on every call. When a vendor reply lands, Fin hands it to Myco in the thread with the invoice it concerns, and Myco re-checks that invoice.

Taking over the queue

The disbursement policy's hold rules are written into the room guidelines. For a large handoff, Myco splits the invoice reading across parallel helpers and gets one combined result back before it proposes anything.

Vendor replies, and a freight surcharge that was wrong

A vendor response clears one condition and leaves the others to check. When Ashcombe confirms in writing that its invoice is not a resubmission, the duplicate flag comes off, and Myco runs the invoice through every hold rule again: W-9 on file, bank details verified, amount against the PO. A bank detail change that arrives by email stays held until someone confirms it by phone, using a number already on file.

Corrections are scoped tightly. When purchasing writes that Brindlewood's freight surcharge was billed at the wrong rate, only Brindlewood invoices coded to the freight account are recomputed, and its other invoices stay as approved. Ryan re-checks the run against the cash cap after every change and posts the final run once, in a single message, so the payment file is never submitted twice.

What the checks catch

• A duplicate flag cleared without written confirmation from the vendor
• An invoice approved while the vendor's W-9 is missing or its bank details are unverified
• A payment run that goes over the cash cap after a late approval
• A freight correction applied to a vendor's non-freight invoices
• A payment run posted a second time after a correction

What stays with people

• Approving every disposition and every correction to an AP entry
• Confirming vendor bank details by phone before an invoice is released
• Approving each payment run, with treasury releasing it
• Sending vendor requests, which Fin prepares as drafts in Outlook or Gmail

Integrations in this workflow

Kylon is not an AP system or an ERP, and it does not replace either. It sits across the tools the desk already uses and keeps the handoff, and every decision in it, in one place.

• Airtable
• Box
• Gmail
• Google Drive
• Outlook
• Slack

• Airtable holds the AP entries, their dispositions and the payment run allocations
• Box holds the invoice PDFs each entry is checked against
• Google Drive keeps the disbursement policy, the W-9 register and the handoff note
• Outlook carries the shared AP mailbox where vendors reply
• Gmail carries the threads with purchasing and the controller, with replies drafted for a person to send
• Slack is where purchasing and receiving flag invoice questions

Where to start

Start with the handoff itself. Connect the Airtable AP table and the Box invoice folder, and put one rule in the room guidelines: any vendor response re-checks the invoice against every hold rule, and no payment run is posted until the AP manager approves it.

“A handoff is clean when the new owner has checked every entry, not when the old owner wrote a good note.”

Set it up with your agent

Open a new Room, add your agent and paste this prompt. It connects the tools, builds the App with you and asks for your rules one step at a time, and nothing goes out until a person approves it.