As small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) scale their operations, managing procurement and accounts payable (AP)↗ gets increasingly complicated. Relying on manual processes can lead to errors, bottlenecks, and compliance risks that affect your entire organisation.
Procure-to-pay (P2P) automation (also called purchase-to-pay automation) solves this problem by digitising the entire procure-to-pay workflow. It enables finance teams at growing companies to handle increasing transaction volumes without doing more work.
This guide introduces P2P software, explains why it matters for growing SMBs, and shows how you can integrate it into your existing processes with ease.
What’s P2P automation?
P2P automation refers to software that simplifies how businesses manage every step of the purchase-to-pay process:
- Purchase requisition and approval
- Purchase order (PO) creation
- Invoice processing
- Payment execution and reporting
Manual paperwork and disconnected systems are outdated, costly, and difficult to scale. P2P automation software helps you and your team establish a more connected, auditable workflow. It lets you manage procurement and AP through a single, streamlined process.
Automation technologies like AI, optical character recognition (OCR), and enterprise resource planning (ERP)↗ power P2P software. These technologies work together to minimise errors and provide real-time visibility to finance teams.
Note: In this article, “procure to pay” and “purchase to pay” point to the same P2P cycle, which encompasses everything from processing purchase requests to recording transactions. Some organisations interpret these terms in different ways, but for our purposes, they’re interchangeable.
4 steps to automate your procure-to-pay process
The last thing you want is an inefficient, clunky P2P process blocking your business growth. But automation isn’t just about speed or volume. It’s also about increasing visibility, accuracy, and context, providing leaders with the tools to make informed, evidence-based decisions.
P2P automation can centralise approvals, invoices, and payments so finance teams can track status, context, and maintain an auditable workflow for outgoing spend.
Here’s how automation transforms four steps of the P2P process, and why it matters.
Step 1: Purchase requisition and approval
Manual approvals don’t generally provide the necessary budget context, which can be a major contributor to overspending. Automating procure-to-pay workflows addresses this problem by:
- Providing real-time budget visibility during approvals
- Enforcing internal approval policies with customisable approval rules, including 4-eyes settings and audit trails.
- Limiting delays via digital routing and notifications
With Moss, requests and expenses can be allocated to budgets and routed to the responsible cost centre/cost carrier managers for approval. Budget managers can monitor budget status and receive notifications, and Moss flags potential budget-reporting discrepancies when linked purchase requests and invoices use different budgets. This enables better approval decisions across the board.
With Moss, requests and expenses can be allocated to budgets and routed to the responsible cost centre/cost carrier managers for approval. Budget managers can monitor budget status and receive notifications, and Moss flags potential budget-reporting discrepancies when linked purchase requests and invoices use different budgets.
Step 2: Purchase order creation and vendor onboarding
In Moss, once a purchase request has been delivered, you can generate a PO number and a corresponding PO PDF to document the purchase. This eliminates the need for manual entry and significantly increases accounting efficiency↗.
Moss supports supplier account mapping and lets you export spend data into your accounting system (e.g., to create bills to pay and journal entries), supporting consistent records and an auditable trail. Digitising this process supports consistent PO creation and helps avoid inaccuracies. It also produces a connected, auditable trail linking requests and POs to invoices.
Key benefits include:
- Faster, simpler onboarding
- Reduced risk of duplicates and errors
- Seamless integration with existing financial systems
Step 3: Delivery receipt and invoice processing
Automation can link invoices to purchase requests and support traceability. In Moss, invoices go through a Verify step to confirm billed items match what was delivered, and matching an invoice to a purchase request can allow the Approve step to be skipped (depending on the workflow).
Automation connects invoices to purchase requests and delivery receipts, which lets teams fully trace every payment. It also enables three-way matching, which compares the PO, invoice data, and receiving report to confirm that the team received the correct order before making payment.
Moss’ automated three-way matching feature detects discrepancies early, helping prevent fraud and mistakes. Your finance teams will have the context they need to track and audit every payment.
Step 4: Payment execution and reporting
Finance teams gain real-time visibility into committed and actual spend by automating runs and reporting. The system organises and presents the data in an easy-to-digest format, empowering better decisions and smoother communication.
Moss supports:
- Bulk domestic and global transfers↗ in over 70 currencies
- Moss supports 4-eyes payment authorisation (two admins must authorise payments, if enabled) and authorising payments with 2FA.
- Budget impact tracking for cash flow↗ transparency
- Direct integration with accounting platforms like Xero and Quickbooks for faster, less stressful month-end closes
Benefits of P2P automation
Implementing P2P automation drives better efficiency and fewer errors. Here are some key advantages of automating the P2P cycle:
- Reduced costs: Minimise invoice processing costs by automating manual tasks.
- Faster cycle times: Reduce approval and payment delays by digitising workflows.
- Improved compliance: Maintain audit trails, enforce internal policies, and meet regulatory demands.
- More scalable systems: Cut hiring needs and resource buildup as you scale your operations.
- Better data transparency: Give finance teams real-time visibility into spend and budgets.
- Stronger internal control: Lower fraud risk and prevent duplicate payments with automated checks.
Streamlining invoice and payment workflows with Moss
Moss empowers finance teams across diverse industries to automate their invoice-based workflows, simplifying approvals and payment accuracy. Pay with Moss↗ digitises and simplifies the entire P2P cycle. It handles everything from purchase requests to invoice processing↗ in an intuitive, multi-user platform.
Key features include:
- Custom approval chains
- Automatic PO generation
- Domestic and international payments
- Quick invoice capture, matching, and verification
- Proactive payment scheduling
- ERP and accounting integrations
Moss reduces compliance issues and financial risks in the P2P cycle by enforcing automated approval workflows and advanced budget controls↗. For example, it warns when a linked purchase request and invoice fall under different budgets, helping prevent double-counting and misaligned tracking.
Customer success story: Venture Beyond
Don’t take our word for it; the results speak for themselves. We’ve partnered with established companies, startups, and fast-growing SMBs to transform their spend management processes. Take Venture Beyond↗, for example. Managing spending with spreadsheets and fragmented software was a struggle for them.
Moss helped Venture Beyond reduce their processing times by 30% with OCR technology and automation. They also reclaimed £30k via improved receipt capture and pre-accounting processes.
S2P vs. P2P
As discussed, P2P focuses on operational workflows, from requisition to final payment. But source-to-pay (S2P) also includes upstream activities such as sourcing, vendor evaluation, and contract management.
To put it simply:
- P2P: Transactional efficiency
- S2P: Strategic sourcing and P2P
Businesses with complex procurement processes often implement S2P strategies to address barriers to sourcing, while SMBs more commonly focus on P2P for efficiency and compliance.
Faster P2P workflows with Moss automation
Manually processing payment requests and invoices takes time and often leads to errors, delays, and inaccuracies. Outdated software only makes payments and reporting more difficult. Automation fixes these issues, speeding up payment processing, minimising errors, and simplifying the entire workflow for growing SMBs.
Modernise your accounting systems with Moss’ AI-driven, automated AP software↗. You’ll see the impact from day one.
