Purchase-to-Pay (P2P) Automation

What is Purchase-to-Pay (P2P)?

Purchase-to-pay (P2P), also called procure-to-pay, is the end-to-end business process covering the acquisition of goods and services from initial requisition through supplier payment and record reconciliation.

The P2P cycle

The P2P cycle spans every stage of procurement and payment. Key steps include:

• Purchase requisition and approval
• Purchase order creation and dispatch
• Goods or services receipt and confirmation
• Invoice receipt and capture
• Three-way matching (verifying invoice against PO and goods receipt)
• Exception handling and approval routing
• Payment execution
• General ledger posting

P2P automation and document processing

P2P automation is largely a document processing challenge. Every stage of the cycle generates or depends on documents, including:

• Requisitions
• Purchase orders (POs)
• Delivery notes
• Invoices
• Remittance advice

Each of these documents must be captured, extracted, and validated accurately for the cycle to proceed without manual intervention.

The role of intelligent document processing (IDP)

Intelligent document processing (IDP) handles the document intelligence layer of P2P automation. It enables high straight-through processing (STP) rates across the invoice matching and payment steps that represent the highest manual effort in most organizations' P2P workflows.