The stretch from an invoice arriving to the money leaving is where suppliers form their opinion of you, and it is the part of payables most worth timing. The work involved is short: capture, match, approve, code, schedule. The elapsed time is not. Two waits account for nearly all the difference, and both are addressable without changing how any of the work is done.
Wait one: getting to the approver
An invoice sitting with the wrong person, or with the right person who is away, or in a queue nobody owns. Routing to a named approver, automatic cover during absence and escalation after a set period remove most of this. It is the largest single component of elapsed time in most teams and the cheapest to fix.
Wait two: the payment run
An approved invoice waits for the next scheduled run. That is legitimate and worth being deliberate about: running weekly rather than fortnightly halves the average wait at no cost, and running more often than that mostly adds administration. The point is to choose the rhythm rather than inherit it.
What to tell the supplier
Most chasing calls are a supplier trying to find out one fact: when will this be paid. Sending a remittance advice, and answering that question when asked with a date rather than a status, removes a surprising amount of work from both sides. It also converts a relationship problem into an administrative one.
Questions people ask about invoice to payment
How often should we run payments?
Weekly suits most organisations. More often adds administration; less often adds an unnecessary wait that suppliers experience as slowness.
Should we pay early for a discount?
Only where the discount exceeds your cost of capital and the cash is genuinely available. It is a finance decision rather than a payables one.
What causes most supplier chasing?
Not knowing when they will be paid. A remittance advice and a clear expected date remove most of the calls.