If your accounts payable department is working long and hard to pay suppliers electronically, tell ‘em not to bother.

It’s long been touted as a move best-in-class companies make: Rather than cutting dozens, hundreds or even thousands of paper checks to vendors each pay period, companies should make as many payments electronically as possible.

Only problem? The payoff’s probably not worth the effort. That’s the revelation from a new benchmark study by the International Accounts Payable Professionals.

And while there are plenty of automated disbursement options out there, it doesn’t matter which one your company embraces!

There’s zero link between top A/P performance and automated disbursement methods, says the study. So let your CFO know: Getting e-payments out to many different vendors in many different formats probably won’t give you the lift you’re after.

So which strategies will give your organization a bigger payoff for its efforts? Hint: It’s what your finance folks do before your company goes to pay any bill.

Here are three payables best practices still worth pursuing:

1. Receive invoices electronically. Better to receive than give … electronically, that is. While letting payments leave your A/P department at the press of a button doesn’t do much, if you accept invoices from vendors electronically, you’ll enjoy a real difference. The higher the percentage of invoices received electronically, the better performing the A/P department. That’s particularly good news – any company with an e-mail system can start receiving invoices as PDF documents or e-mails themselves.

2. Minimize keying. Embracing that last best practice will make the next one a lot easier, too: less manual invoice entry. Keying hour after hour is an invitation to error. So any way your company can minimize A/P’s keying duties, the more efficient and streamlined your process will be. Plus, it will free your A/P staffers for more strategic tasks, like timing payments and determining where there’s an opportunity to take more prompt-pay discounts. Even if you can’t slash the amount of keying A/P staffers do, you can build in some protections to guard against finger slips, duplicate pays, etc. Encourage staffers to take breaks every 30 minutes or so when they’re doing data entry. And consider cross-checking among staffers. Of course, a uniformly organized master vendor file will help any errors that do slip in to be caught early.

3. Pick plastic. Or your company could skip the invoices and keying altogether! Purchasing card use is another distinguisher for the best-of-the-best. They turn to this strategy more often than their lesser-performing peers. Perhaps it’s time for a renewed push for plastic. Companies aren’t just using p-cards for small dollar purchases or travel – they’re having success with larger-ticket buys, too.

Info: For more on the A/P Productivity Index, click www.theiapp.org/apindex