End-to-end purchasing workflow in Source-to-Pay Operations

Gather a high-level understanding of the end-to-end purchasing workflow with the Sourcing and Procurement Operations (SPO) and Accounts Payable Operations (APO) products within the Source-to-Pay (S2P) suite.

The purchasing workflow is triggered when an active contractual price is available for a product or service the shopper intends to purchase.

Prerequisites

Install and activate the necessary plugins. For information on the respective product plugins and installation sequence, see:

• SPO: Application plugin installation sequence in Sourcing and Procurement Operations
• APO: Application plugin installation sequence in Accounts Payable Operations

Workflow of the purchasing process

The following figure shows how different personas use the various applications withing the SPO and APO products to complete the end-to-end purchasing process within the Source-to-Pay (S2P) suite.

Figure 1. Workflow of the purchasing process

In this workflow:

1. An employee performs a quick checkout with a product or service that has a contractual price. A purchase requisition is created. For more information, see Order a product with quick checkout.

   Alternatively, an employee performs a full checkout with products or services that have contractual prices. For more information, see Complete your checkout.

   Role: sn_shop.shopper.

   Application portal: Shopping Hub.

2. Approval rules route the purchase request to one or more assigned approvers.
3. An approver reviews the purchase request and approves it. A purchase order is created. For more information, see Approve a request from Employee Center.

   Role: sn_shop.procurement_specialist.

   Application portal: Employee Center.

4. A procurement specialist fulfills the purchase order from the associated supplier.

   Role: sn_shop.procurement_specialist.

   Application portal: Source-to-Pay Workspace.

5. On fulfillment, the employee confirms receipt of the requested product. For more information, see Confirm receipt of your order from Shopping Hub Home and Confirm receipt of your order from Employee Center.

   Role: sn_shop.shopper.

   Application portal: Shopping Hub or Employee Center.

6. Invoices are auto-created. When invoices aren’t auto-submitted or don’t match the purchase orders, or when invoice exceptions must be resolved, an accounts payable specialist gets involved. For more information, see Accounts Payable Invoice Processing.

   Alternatively, the accounts payable specialist manually creates invoices. For more information, see Accounts Payable Specialist manual tasks.

   Role: sn_ap_apm.accounts_payable_specialist.

   Application portal: Source-to-Pay Workspace.

7. The accounts payable specialist converts invoices of purchase order type to invoice types such as non-purchase order, credit memo, and debit memo, based on their interactions with shoppers and suppliers of business services. For more information, see Accounts Payable Specialist manual tasks.

   Role: sn_ap_apm.accounts_payable_specialist.

   Application portal: Source-to-Pay Workspace.

8. An accounts payable agent manages and works on assigned invoice cases, requests more information from suppliers or employees if necessary, and creates and assigns tasks to the users. For more information, see Invoice Case Management.

   Role: sn_ap_cm.agent.

   Application portal: Source-to-Pay Workspace.

9. The employee, approver, procurement specialist, accounts payable specialist, and accounts payable agent have complete visibility into the status of the workflow through process completion, from their respective portals.