AP automation where each invoice belongs to a job, a property or a project.

The same four pieces. In each of these industries an AP entry is built from the vendor's invoice, the document it answers to, the coding and someone's approval, with the vendor record underneath. That record matters everywhere: payments for services to vendors that aren't corporations generally go on Form 1099-NEC, the IRS form for nonemployee compensation, so a missing W-9 turns into a year-end problem in a contractor's office and a management company's alike. What differs from one industry to the next is the name of that second document and how finely the coding runs.

What the invoice answers to. A contractor's supply-house bill answers to a PO and a delivery ticket, and a sub's billing to its subcontract. A plant matches the invoice to a PO and a receipt. Oracle's Payables help describes the ladder: two-way matching compares invoice and PO, three-way adds the quantity received, and four-way adds the quantity accepted, which counts wherever incoming material waits on inspection. A facility services sub bills against your work order and the rates in your agreement with it, while the customer's side of that same work order often carries a not-to-exceed amount. An engineering subconsultant bills against its agreement and fee by phase. A property vendor may answer to a service contract, a work order or nothing at all, as most utility bills do.

How finely the coding runs. Contractors code each line to job, cost code and cost type, and sales tax shapes what the line means. Under Texas's rule for contractors, 34 TAC 3.291, a lump-sum contractor is the consumer of the materials it installs, pays the tax to its suppliers, and accrues use tax itself when an out-of-state seller didn't collect it, so an out-of-state invoice with no tax line can still owe some. Property managers code to a property and GL account, plus a fund on association books. Plants post PO lines to what they bought and code the rest to GL and department. Engineering firms code a sub's cost as reimbursable or direct, phase by phase.

Due dates and markups have rules of their own. On federal construction contracts, FAR 52.232-27 requires a subcontract clause that pays the sub for satisfactory work within 7 days of the prime being paid. In California, the state supreme court held in Wm. R. Clarke Corp. v. Safeco (1997) that a true pay-if-paid clause is unenforceable, while a pay-when-paid clause only fixes the usual time for payment. For engineers, the markup on a sub's cost can differ between two of your own contracts: in a July 2026 question-and-answer document for prospective consultants, Caltrans wrote that a prime consultant cannot apply its profit markup or indirect cost rates to a subconsultant's services or direct costs.

Approval follows the work, not the vendor. A project accountant or PM signs off a jobsite invoice, an owner or board approves above a repair limit, the AP lead or controller at a plant, the operations manager on a sub's visit, and each phase's PM on an engineering invoice. The proof of concept drafts and flags for those same people. It never approves, pays or posts anything. Each industry page sets out what to send, how the test is scored and its one hard limit, so open the card nearest your own desk.