The procure to pay process spans two departments, and payables owns the second half. What is less often said plainly is that payables also inherits the quality of the first half, and that inheritance determines most of its workload. An invoice arrives easy or hard depending on decisions made weeks earlier by people who will never see the consequence.
What payables receives
An invoice, and either a purchase order and a goods receipt to compare it against, or nothing. That single fork decides whether the invoice costs minutes or hours. Everything payables can do about its own efficiency operates within the share it receives on the easy side of that fork.
What payables controls
Tolerance, exception routing, ageing and the approval path. These determine how efficiently the hard invoices are handled and how quickly the easy ones clear. They are worth optimising and they cannot change the mix, which is why an efficient payables team can still be busy if upstream discipline is poor.
How to have the conversation upstream
With numbers rather than complaints. A monthly count of invoices arriving with no purchase order, broken down by department, changes behaviour where a reminder does not. Presenting it as a shared measure rather than as a grievance also makes it likelier that purchasing engages, since the same number reflects on them.
Questions people ask about p2p process in accounts payable
Should payables chase purchasing?
Payables should measure and report; somebody senior to both should own the behaviour. Peer chasing between departments rarely changes anything durable.
What is the single most useful number?
The share of invoices arriving with both an order and a recorded receipt. It describes the health of the whole cycle in one figure.
Can payables fix this alone?
No. It can make the consequence visible, which is usually what starts the fix.