Roles in the Purchase-to-Pay process

A supplier is a person or a business that sells or provides the purchased goods.

A requestor initiates the Purchase-to-Pay process. The work focuses on getting their goods as quickly as possible and will find any loopholes to speed up the process.

The Procurement department is responsible of ensuring the buyer receives goods, services, or works at the best possible price when aspects such as quality, quantity, time and location are compared. They are also responsible for finding and negotiating with vendors to setup contracts. A purchaser is concerned with negotiating deals with suppliers and spending as little working capital. The work focuses primarily on the Purchase order activities.

Warehouse and Inventory management both are responsible for the operations within a warehouse.

Business and automation managers are concerned with throughput times and efficiency of the process. The focus can be on parts or the entire Purchase-to-Pay process.

Auditors are concerned with the risks and controls. Many checks are commonly already in the system and they want to test the effectiveness and efficiency of the controls. The work focuses on all the cases and from start to end. They are primarily interested in high-risk cases with high values.