A company buys components from its supplier. However, the supplier has not sent the invoice to the buyer and the buyer will not pay until next month. How will that amount of money be shown in the financial statements of the buying organization?
The buyer won't pay the supplier until next month. This is a liability to the buyer. This amount can be recorded as accrued expense or accounts payable. On the other hand, the supplier has not sent the invoice, so it should be accrued expense.
Both accounts payables and accrued expenses are liabilities. Accounts payable is the total amount of short-term obligations or debt a company has to pay to its creditors for goods or services bought on credit. With accounts payables, the vendor's or supplier's invoices have been received and recorded.
On the other hand, accrued expenses are the total liability that is payable for goods and services that have been consumed by the company or received. However, accrued expenses are those bills in which an invoice or bill has not yet been received. As a result, accrued expenses can sometimes be an estimated amount of what's owed, which is adjusted later to the exact amount, once the invoice has been received.
Conversely, accounts payable should represent the exact amount of the total owed from all of the invoices received.
[Reference:, - CIPS study guide page 55-56, - Understanding Accrued Expenses vs. Accounts Payable (investopedia.com), LO 1, AC 1.4]
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