How the Procure-to-Pay Automation Spine Works

Overview

Procurement, inventory, and accounting used to be three separate silos — someone raised a purchase order, someone else received the stock, and a third person keyed the supplier invoice from scratch. Plenix now connects them into a single procure-to-pay spine: each step feeds the next automatically, so quantities and costs never have to be re-entered and nothing falls through the gaps.

The flow at a glance

Step	What happens	Where
1. Purchase request	Someone requests what's needed; it goes through approval	Procurement → Purchase Requests
2. Convert to PO	An approved request converts straight into a purchase order to a vendor	Procurement / Purchasing
3. Goods receipt	When stock arrives, you post a receipt for the quantities received	Purchasing → Goods Receipts
4. Stock updated	Received quantities post to inventory automatically	Inventory → Items / Stock
5. Draft vendor bill	A draft bill is raised automatically, matched to the PO and receipt	Accounting → Bills

Why it matters

• No re-keying — the PO's lines, quantities, and prices flow into the receipt and the bill.
• 3-way match — the draft vendor bill is matched against the purchase order and the goods receipt, so you only pay for what was ordered and received.
• Live stock — inventory reflects what's actually on hand the moment a receipt is posted, feeding reorder and demand forecasting.
• Clean handover to finance — accounting receives a draft bill ready to review and approve, not a blank form.

What stays under your control

• Purchase requests still go through your approval workflow before becoming a PO.
• The vendor bill is created as a draft — a person reviews and approves it before payment.
• Partial receipts are supported: receive what arrived, and the PO stays open for the rest.

Related how-tos

• How to Run the Procure-to-Pay Flow — the step-by-step version
• How to Post a Goods Receipt

Where to go next

• Next in this module → How Purchasing & Procurement Works
• How to Run the Procure-to-Pay Flow
• Procure-to-Pay — Purchase Request → PO → Goods Receipt → Bill