Accounts payable invoice automation (APIA) tools automate the capture, validation and processing of invoices. These solutions attempt to automatically match invoices to purchase orders (POs) and contracts, or automatically code those invoices that would not have a PO. Payment management, ranging from OK to pay to complete invoice payment, is also included. The expanded scope of APIA includes advanced capabilities, such as automated multiway matching, fraud detection and cash management.
Gartner defines the source-to-pay (S2P) suite market as an integrated set of solutions to source, contract, request, procure, receive and pay for goods and services across an enterprise. These solutions typically are sold as cloud-based software as a service. Source-to-pay suites allow organizations to manage all of their sourcing and procurement activities within a single integrated solution. These solutions are modular in nature allowing customers to activate the functionality that is relevant for their needs. The integrated nature of these solutions allows for data to easily flow across the source-to-pay process providing needed visibility to upstream and downstream documents. An example of this would be the ability to view a purchase order and see the contract that the purchase is related to, the e-sourcing event that led to the contract and downstream documents such as receipts, invoices and payments.