Procure to pay process improvement is about getting control of what your firm spends: who may buy, who approves, and how a supplier invoice is checked before it is paid. In a firm of 10 to 250 staff, the usual problem is not fraud but drift, with purchases agreed by email, invoices arriving with no approval and finance paying to avoid a late fee. This article covers how to tighten the front half of that process on the levelpartner.ai platform: a purchase request form, an approval route and a tracked status for each request. Paying suppliers stays in your bank and accounting software.
Where procure to pay breaks in a growing firm
The process has five stages: someone needs something, the purchase is approved, an order is placed, the goods or service arrive, and the supplier's invoice is checked and paid. In small firms all five happen in one person's head. As the firm grows, they spread across people and inboxes.
The symptoms are recognisable. Two teams buy the same software. A contractor invoice arrives that nobody remembers approving. Finance pays it anyway because the alternative is a week of email. Subscriptions renew for tools nobody uses. None of it is dramatic, but over a year it adds up, and it rarely gets attention while revenue is growing. When revenue stalls, it suddenly matters.
What the platform can do here
The platform is built around clients and sales, not suppliers. But three of its parts fit the front of the process well. Forms capture a purchase request in a standard shape. Workflows route it to the right approver and record the decision. Pipelines in Opportunities track each request through stages, so anyone can see what was approved, ordered and received.
It does not pay suppliers or replace your accounting system's payables ledger. Treat it as the request and approval record that your accounting system's invoice matching then relies on.
Before you start
- A written spending policy: who can approve what, up to which value.
- A list of approvers by team, with deputies.
- Your common spend categories, such as software, contractors, events and equipment.
- A decision on what counts as received for services: a delivery note, a signed-off milestone, a first invoice.
- Agreement from finance that unapproved supplier invoices will be sent back.
How to set up purchase requests and approvals
- Go to Sites, then Forms, click + Create New Form and add fields for requester, team, supplier, category, amount, reason and date needed.
- Go to Opportunities, then Pipelines, click Create new pipeline and add stages for submitted, approved, ordered, received and closed.
- In Automation, then Workflows, create a workflow from scratch with a Form Submitted trigger set to the purchase request form.
- Add a Create/Update Opportunity action that places the request in the submitted stage.
- Add an If Else action on the amount: below your limit to the team approver, above it to a senior approver.
- On each branch, add a Send Internal Notification action asking the approver to move the request to approved or closed.
- Create a second workflow with a Pipeline Stage Changed trigger for the approved stage that notifies finance with the request reference.
- Ask requesters to quote the request reference to the supplier so it appears on the invoice.
- Train finance to match each supplier invoice to an approved request before it goes for payment.
Matching the invoice to the request
The value of the approval record shows up when the supplier invoice arrives. Finance looks for the request reference, checks the amount against what was approved and checks the request has reached received. If any of the three fails, the invoice goes back to the requester. That three-way check is the core of any procure to pay process, and having the request and its status in one place makes it fast.
If you capture supplier invoices by scanning, the guide to scanning supplier invoices and capturing their data covers the intake side, and the overview of OCR for invoice processing explains what automated reading can and cannot check.
Suppose purchases are agreed by email and finance finds about 15 supplier invoices a month with no clear approver. With a request form and an approval pipeline, and invoices sent back when they lack a reference, two or three unapproved invoices a month would be a fair aim within a quarter. The pipeline could also surface software subscriptions with no named owner, which are obvious candidates for cancelling. The numbers are illustrative.
What it replaces and the time it takes
The request form replaces purchase approvals by email, chat message and corridor conversation. Building the form, pipeline and two workflows takes a day. Running it costs each requester a minute per request and each approver a few seconds per decision. Finance gains the time it used to spend tracking down who approved what.
The mistake most people make
Making the form too long. If requesting a purchase is harder than buying on a company card, people will use the card. Keep the form to the fields you actually check, and set a small-value threshold below which no request is needed.
The second mistake is letting finance pay unapproved invoices anyway. The process only works if an invoice without an approved request is sent back, politely and every time.
When not to formalise
If your firm has fewer than a handful of people who buy anything, a shared spending policy and a monthly review of the bank statement may be enough. Formal requests earn their time once several teams spend independently, or once recurring subscriptions start appearing that nobody owns.
Troubleshooting
Approvers ignore notifications. The alert goes to email they do not read. Send it as a text or an internal notification as well, and give each approver a deputy.
Requests skip approval. The value condition in the workflow is wrong. Test it with a request just above and just below the limit.
Suppliers do not quote the reference. Ask requesters to put it on the order, and send back invoices without it for the first month until suppliers learn.
The pipeline fills with closed requests. Archive or filter requests at the closed stage so the open ones stay visible.
Frequently asked questions
Can the platform pay supplier invoices?
No. The platform collects payments from your clients. Pay suppliers from your bank or accounting software, using the platform's approval record as your check.
Do we need purchase orders?
For a service firm, an approved request with a reference usually does the job of a purchase order. Formal POs make sense if large suppliers require them.
What value should need approval?
Set it where the risk starts to matter for your firm. A low threshold for new suppliers and a higher one for existing contracts is a common pattern.
How does this help when revenue is flat?
It shows where money is going and stops spend that nobody chose. Cutting unowned subscriptions and duplicate purchases improves margin without touching sales. For a scanned-invoice intake, see OCR invoice scanning basics.