What is purchase-to-pay (P2P)?
By Tim White · Glossary · Last updated
Purchase-to-pay, or P2P, is the full process from requesting goods or services through ordering, receiving, matching the invoice, approving it and paying the supplier. It joins purchasing and accounts payable into one chain. Procure-to-pay means the same thing.
The steps
Requisition, purchase order, goods received, invoice received, match, approve, pay, record. Each step is a control. A weak one shows up later as an overpayment or a bill nobody can explain.
How small businesses simplify it
Most skip the formal requisition and only issue POs above a threshold. Receiving is a signed delivery ticket. Matching and approval happen together when the owner looks at the bill. That's fine, as long as someone checks the invoice against what was ordered and delivered before paying.
The invoice step is where a document has to become data. That's the part InvoiceJet handles: reading the bill, checking the math, flagging duplicates and handing clean data to whatever comes next.
Common questions
Where do most P2P delays happen?
At invoice entry and approval. Bills wait in inboxes to be keyed, then wait again for someone to sign off.
Sources
Keep reading
Try it on your own invoices
10 invoices a month free, no card. Every field comes back with a confidence level and the text it was read from.