You've narrowed the field to a handful of accounts payable automation providers, and now someone has to write the document that decides between them. A loosely written AP automation RFP brings back vague, sales-heavy answers that are hard to compare. A well-built one makes every provider explain how they would handle your invoices, your payments and your vendors, on the same terms and in the same format.
How to Create Your AP Automation RFP is written for finance and AP teams at exactly this point: past early research, shortlist in hand, and responsible for choosing a solution that stakeholders will sign off on. Produced by Bottomline, the company behind Paymode, it shows you how to structure your request so it reflects your priorities rather than a provider's pitch.
What to include in an AP automation RFP
The guide organizes the RFP into 11 sections. The first is yours to write. It covers how to introduce your company and project, which goals and timelines to set out, and why confidentiality terms belong up front. Providers answer the remaining ten, and each one comes with a short explanation of its purpose and a few sample questions that show the depth you should expect.
Together those sections span the full AP cycle and the business questions around it, including:
- Fraud prevention, cyber security and regulatory compliance
- Invoice submission, capture and processing
- B2B payments, payment types and vendor self-service
- Reporting, ERP integration and system reliability
- Vendor enrollment, implementation, support and pricing
You'll come away knowing which areas tend to separate one provider from another, and where a soft answer should trigger a follow-up.
AP automation vendor evaluation questions that produce comparable answers
Collecting proposals is the easy part. Comparing them is harder. One provider prices by invoice volume, another by users or modules. One bundles training and upgrades into the subscription, another bills for them separately. The guide explains how to frame your pricing questions so responses line up side by side, which turns a total cost of ownership estimate into something you can defend.
It also points you toward topics that are easy to miss during a polished demo. Vendor enrollment is a good example. Whether a provider can actually move your suppliers onto digital payments, and what it does after the first wave signs up, has a big effect on results. The same goes for how invoice processing automation deals with matching exceptions, and how a provider protects payment data and banking details from fraud.
Reference checks get attention too. You'll find guidance on which customers to ask for and the topics worth raising with them before you make a final selection.
Built from real RFPs and paired with an editable template
Every company's selection criteria are different, but most AP automation RFPs share a common core. Bottomline reviewed recent RFPs it received from organizations looking to automate AP and pulled the strongest questions into a customizable spreadsheet template. This document is the high-level companion to that template. It tells you what each section is for and offers practical advice on tailoring it to your project scope and business requirements, so you start from proven questions instead of a blank page.
It also places the RFP within a seven-phase buying process that runs from assessing your current state to final solution selection. That context helps you see how this step builds on the team goals, requirements and business case work you may already have done, and how it feeds the decision that follows.
The result is a short, readable resource you can hand to your project team and use right away. It won't make the decision for you, but it will make sure the answers you get back are the ones you need to make it.
Download the AP automation RFP guide
Get the full guide to see the complete 11-section structure, the sample questions for each area from security to pricing, practical advice on customizing your request, and suggested topics for reference customer conversations. You'll also find the link to Bottomline's customizable RFP template, ready to edit and send to your shortlisted providers.