accounts payable
Also called: payables, AP
Money the company owes suppliers or providers for what it has already received, such as tutor payouts due at the next payout date.
Accounts payable (payables, AP) is money a company owes to suppliers and providers for what it has already received: a hosting bill due next month, tutor payouts due on the next payout date, a contractor's invoice with 30-day terms. On the balance sheet it's a liability; in practice it's short-term funding from the people the company works with.
Payables are the mirror of receivables. When they grow, cash stays in the bank longer: costs have been incurred but not yet paid, so the cash flow statement adds the increase to operating cash. When they shrink, the opposite happens. A predictable payment calendar (twice a month, the month after the bill) makes this timing easy to plan.
Stretching payables is tempting and usually expensive. Suppliers raise prices or ask for prepayment, late fees appear, early-payment discounts are lost and, when the providers are people (freelancers, tutors, drivers), trust in the platform suffers. Payables are a timing tool to plan around, not a hidden credit line.
Example
Klasna pays tutors twice a month: the first half of a month on the 20th, the second half on the 5th of the next month. Video, AI and Club hosts are paid the month after.
On 30 November 2026 it owed 1,918,370 to tutors for 16–30 November and 375,930 for November video, AI and hosts: 2,294,300 of payables.
In June lessons fall by half, yet Klasna pays 3,352,800, more than June earns, because half of May's busy month is still due. Payables smooth cash in good months and carry the past into quiet ones.
Common mistakes
- Treating it as free credit. Stretched payables cost prices, discounts and trust.
- Forgetting the lag in quiet months. A month after a peak still pays for the peak.
- Counting the bank balance as free. Part of it is already owed to suppliers and providers.
- Delaying payouts to people. On a marketplace, late payouts drive providers away faster than any bank would.
Learn it in the course
- Working capital: who pays whom first · Prepayments, payouts and invoices: the cash conversion cycle, working capital on one date, when negative working capital funds growth and why other lines eat cash.
- The cash flow statement and the three financial statements · How the three financial statements link, with a cash flow statement example: operating, investing and financing cash, built from profit with the indirect method.