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Roles
AP / AR specialist
AP / AR specialist is a finance seat focused on payables, receivables, or both, with a named system and a named approval path.
How it works
Separate who keys invoices from who approves payment. PH talent density here is high because of shared-services history. Night hours are optional; close calendars are not. For a U.S. company hiring one Filipino teammate, write this into the brief, the employment contract, and the peso payroll file before the start date. Slack habits do not override the Labor Code, BIR, or NPC. If the local employer of record holds the paper, they run the statutory step; you still owe a clean operating definition so the seat does not fail in week three. Put a number on the example when you budget loaded cost, because a nameless allowance always returns as a December surprise or a missed SLA.
Example: AP owner processes 40 invoices weekly, founder approves over ₱50,000, payments Thursday.
How it differs
Bookkeeper is the wider close. Operations coordinator is logistics, not cash.
Common errors
Same login for bookkeeping and the founder’s bank token.
In practice
Treat AP / AR specialist as a week-one operating object. Restate the week-four outcome in one sentence. If you cannot, the role is still a pile of leftover tasks. Write an owner - founder, local employer, or worker - and a date you will look at it again: first cutoff, first holiday, or first miss. If nobody can show a contract clause, a payslip line, a calendar block, or a checklist box, you do not have ap / ar specialist yet. You have a conversation. Convert the conversation before the person starts, while changing the deal still costs a paragraph rather than a resignation. Re-read the worked example above against the actual hire in front of you. If the numbers in that example cannot be swapped for this seat’s pesos, hours, and start date, the brief is still unfinished.