An alternative to hiring an accounts payable clerk

Instead of hiring an accounts payable clerk, you can hand the work to Dull: a done-for-you back-office service that collects your supplier bills, checks them against your purchase orders and enters them in QuickBooks, Xero or your system, ready for you to approve and pay, for a flat monthly fee, month to month, with a fixed quote on a 15-minute call. Most businesses are live in about a week, and you keep control of every payment.

Below: what an AP clerk does, what hiring one really costs, how the other options compare, and exactly where Dull stops.

What an accounts payable clerk actually does

• Collect supplier invoices from email, scans and vendor portals.
• Check each bill against the purchase order and what was received.
• Enter bills with the right vendor, account, amount and due date.
• Catch duplicate invoices and price or quantity differences.
• Keep vendor details and payment terms current.
• Prepare the payment run and answer vendor questions.

What hiring an accounts payable clerk really costs

BLS doesn’t count accounts payable clerks separately. They fall under bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks (SOC 43-3031), a group of about 1.37 million US workers.

BLS reports that wages make up 70.0% of what private employers spend per worker, and benefits and legally required payroll taxes make up the other 30.0% (Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026). Dividing the median salary by 0.70 gives the all-in figure. It still leaves out job ads, recruiter fees, equipment, software seats and the hours you spend training, so the real cost of a hire is higher. Pay also varies by city: the BLS page has state and metro figures.

This isn’t a like-for-like comparison, and we won’t pretend it is. A full-time employee works about 2,080 hours a year and can pick up anything you hand them. Dull’s pilot covers one process, up to 300 standard records a month. If the seat is bigger than that, tell us on the call and we’ll tell you honestly whether we can cover it.

Your options compared

Temp cost is the median hourly wage plus a typical agency markup of 50% to 65% (American Society of Employers), over 2,080 hours a year. The virtual assistant range is the middle half of full-time asking rates in a 2026 survey of 1,385 Filipino VA applicants (Outsource Accelerator).

• Hiring gets you a dedicated person who learns your business and can take on anything. You also carry the salary, benefits, recruiting, training, and the gap when they’re out or leave.
• A temp agency covers the seat fast with no recruiting on your side. You pay the markup, and you still train and check the work, sometimes again with each new temp.
• An offshore virtual assistant is the cheapest per month. You find, train and manage them, check the work yourself, and handle time zones and turnover.
• A bookkeeper keeps your books accurate and closes the month. Daily invoicing, entry and chasing are a different job, so ask whether they’re included and what they cost.
• Dull is a set price, live in about a week, with a person reviewing every exception and a weekly report. It covers defined, repeatable work, not everything a full-time employee would do.

What Dull handles and what it doesn’t

What we handle

• Bills picked up from a shared inbox you forward them to, or from the place they already land.
• Each bill checked against your rules: purchase order match, totals, duplicates and your approved vendor list.
• Bills entered as bills in QuickBooks, Xero or your system, coded the way you code them, ready for you to approve and pay.
• Exceptions, like a price that doesn’t match the PO, a missing PO or an unknown vendor, held and sent to you with the reason and the question.
• A Friday summary: bills entered, what’s due next week and anything on hold.

For example, picture a distributor that receives 200 supplier invoices a month by email. Each one is checked against its purchase order, entered with the right coding and due date, and anything that looks like a repeat of a bill already entered is held. The owner opens QuickBooks on Friday to a clean list of bills to approve, instead of a folder of PDFs.

What we don’t do

• Paying bills, sending payments or moving money. You approve and pay.
• Payroll, tax filings or anything that needs a licence.
• Approval decisions, like credit limits, refunds, write-offs or payment plans. We prepare them; you decide.
• Medical or dental patient records (HIPAA) and card numbers. They aren’t part of the standard pilot: if your work involves them, tell us on the call and we’ll go through what’s needed before anything starts.
• Phone calls with your customers. The pilot works by email and in your systems.

How the switch works

1. A 15-minute call. Tell us which seat is empty or which work is piling up. We’ll tell you straight whether we can take it on.
2. We learn your rules. You give us a login with only the access the job needs, about 20 examples of finished work, your “always” and “never” rules, and one person who answers our questions.
3. Shadow first. We run alongside your current process on real records, and you check our output against yours before we take anything over.
4. Live in about a week. Then you get a summary every Friday: what got done, what’s waiting on you and anything blocked. It’s month to month, so if we stop being worth it, you cancel.

When hiring is the better choice

Hire if you want one person to also run payments, negotiate terms with vendors and manage a multi-entity close, or if the role needs someone on site to handle paper and checks.

Related

Covering more than one seat? See the alternative to hiring an accounts receivable clerk, the alternative to hiring a data entry clerk, the alternative to hiring an order entry clerk, and what Dull costs. Weighing a temp against a hire? Read hire, temp or hand it off.

Frequently asked questions

How much does an accounts payable clerk cost?

BLS groups AP clerks with bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks, whose median pay was $50,670 in May 2025. With benefits and payroll taxes that is about $72,400 a year, or $6,030 a month. Dull charges a flat monthly fee, month to month, usually well below the all-in cost of a full-time hire. You get a fixed quote on a 15-minute call.

Does Dull pay my bills?

No. We never move money out of your accounts. Bills are entered and lined up, and you approve and pay them yourself.

How do you catch duplicate invoices?

Every bill is checked against the bills already entered: vendor, invoice number, amount and date. Anything that looks like a repeat is held and sent to you as a question.

Can we forward bills by email?

Yes. Forward bills to a shared inbox and we pick them up from there. Anyone you approve can send work in.

What happens when a bill doesn’t match the purchase order?

It isn’t entered. It’s set aside, reviewed by a person and sent to you with the difference and the question, so nothing is guessed.