Procure-to-pay applications

Help your employees make the best, most compliant buying decisions with an AI-facilitated guided buying experience.
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What is SAP Ariba Buying and Invoicing?

SAP Ariba Buying and Invoicing is a set of procure-to-pay applications that help you drive increased visibility, cost control, and compliance across your procurement processes through better user experience, improved supplier collaboration, and greater spend coverage.

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Explore a cloud-based, consumer-grade purchasing application for policy-compliant business buying while ensuring supplier collaboration.

·       Guide users to the right purchasing choices using embedded AI capabilities

·       Ensure trading partner collaboration using the world’s largest business network

·       Improve accounts payable compliance through automated invoicing

·       Ensure orchestration through federated processes even when using multiple ERPs

Read the solution brief
SAP Ariba Buying and Invoicing Demo

See how the SAP Ariba solution benefits can help you improve your procure-to-pay process.

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Key benefits

Achieve sustainable savings

Realize negotiated savings with every purchase through compliance with contracts, processes, regulations, and supplier strategies.

Increase spend coverage

Manage spending with category- and persona-specific buying channel configuration, access to rich catalog content, and real-time user guidance on purchasing policies.

Improve procurement efficiency

Implement touchless collaboration with your trading partners for faster order fulfillments and status updates, invoice processing, discounts optimization, and payment visibility.

Key features

This solution includes guided buying, catalogs, invoice management, and network-based collaboration for a comprehensive procure-to-pay experience.

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Guided buying capability

  • Smart guidance for purchasers

  • Purchasing policies for compliance

  • AI-generated recommendations

  • Risk-aware guidance

Network-based collaboration

  • Self-service portal for suppliers

  • Real-time order and payment processing

  • Touchless transactions

  • Process compliance

Catalog content

  • Buyer- and supplier-managed catalogs

  • Contract-compliance enforcement

  • Milestones tracking

  • Spot buy and Marketplace connectivity

Mobility

  • Rich mobile experience

  • Requisition monitoring and approval on the go

Invoice management

  • Touchless invoice reconciliation

  • Country-specific tax invoicing

  • Automated invoice processing

  • Built-in exception management library

ERP and third-party integration

  • Multiple ERP integration

  • Real-time tax, budget, and inventory checks

  • Open APIs framework for process extensibility

  • Integration with third-party data providers

Calculate your potential savings

Tell us three things to see how much you can save with SAP Ariba procure-to-pay.

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Get the mobile apps now

If you’re already using the SAP Ariba Buying and Invoicing solution, you can download and start using SAP Ariba mobile apps today.

Portfolio recognition and awards

SAP Ariba solutions are recognized for their multi-faceted industry leadership based on verified user reviews, ratings, and in-depth customer insights.

Technical and security information

Discover how our cloud solutions fuel your spend strategy with SAP Business Technology Platform and protect your enterprise with built-in security.

Visibility

Unlock spend data with solutions that deliver total spend visibility, aid in planning and forecasting, and connect critical data from SAP and third-party sources.

Extensibility

Customize and extend the value of spend management solutions by eliminating inefficiencies, building new apps, enhancing existing apps, and providing personalized experiences.

Learn more and explore our use cases

Integration

Centralize data, remove silos, and create a connected enterprise with integration solutions from SAP, streaming your source-to-pay process with prebuilt connections.

Data security

Help protect confidentiality and data integrity.

Learn how to secure your intelligent enterprise 

Business process security

Support compliance with regularity requirements.

Explore security products from SAP 

Risk and threat mitigation

Drive continuous improvement across your operations.

Report a security issue 

Cloud delivery operations

Enable a smooth transformation while meeting security and compliance requirements.

Explore our cloud options 

See what analysts are saying

SAP Named a Leader in Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Source-to-Pay Suites

Find out why SAP has been recognized as a Leader for our ability to execute and completeness of vision in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Source-to-Pay Suites.

See why SAP is a Leader 

The Hackett Group’s 2025 Procurement Agenda and Key Issues Study Results

This research reveals how procurement success can be achieved through advanced analytics and real-time data visibility; AI technology; and the right balance of integration by ERP and suite solutions.

Read Hackett Group report 

SAP a leader in IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Accounts Payable Automation Software 2024 Vendor Assessment

Learn why SAP is the only company named a Leader in all three IDC MarketScape reports for Worldwide Accounts Payable Automation Software.

Get the IDC report 

Start your free trial of SAP Ariba Buying

Now you can sign up to take a hands-on tour of the solution’s guided buying capability with no cost or obligation.

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Discover how guided buying simplifies procurement

Try your hand at two simple scenarios:

  1. Basic navigation and simple procurement with auto-approval
  2. Simple procurement with approval using the SAP Ariba Mobile app

Experience guided buying from placing an order through receipt of goods.

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Frequently asked questions

Procure to pay is the process that integrates purchasing and accounts payable systems. It’s part of the wider procurement management process and involves four key stages:

  1. Selection of goods and services
  2. Enforcement of compliance and order
  3. Receiving and reconciliation
  4. Invoicing and payment

Digitalizing your procure-to-pay process with procure-to-pay software can strengthen compliance and control among vendors, contracts, regulations, buyers, and accounts payable. Procure-to-pay solutions help you automate processes so you can buy from preferred suppliers at negotiated prices without manual paperwork. This helps you actively control and improve global spend, reduce manual errors, streamline catalog maintenance, and speed up approval of new suppliers.

Procure to pay is not the same as accounts payable. Procure to pay is the end-to-end process that enables procurement and accounts payable teams to buy and then pay vendors for goods or services. Organizations often use procure-to-pay software to digitalize and automate key procure-to-pay activities while guiding buyers to comply with procurement rules. The invoice management and payment steps of the procure-to-pay process are handled by the accounts payable team.

SAP Ariba Buying and Invoicing is a software-as-a-service solution. It provides ease of use, compliance, and flexibility throughout the procure-to-pay process. From small, growing companies to large enterprises, this procure-to-pay software helps organizations streamline catalog maintenance, simplify commerce, and efficiently manage workflows for procure to pay.

 

Intuitive tools provide users with straightforward ways to search for goods and services. Meanwhile, guided buying functionality, preconfigured approval workflows, budget checks, and contract management capabilities help ensure compliant spend.

 

The procure-to-pay solution also enables the creation and validation of invoices from buyers, suppliers, and third parties. Based on user-defined business rules, invoices are systematically matched against POs, contracts, and receipts with invalid invoices sent back to suppliers. After validation, the procure-to-pay solution begins exception handling and workflow approval, which includes automatic escalation and delegation to help ensure that invoices are processed quickly and effectively. After final approval, invoices can be directly linked to your integrated payment process.

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Source-to-Pay Suites, Micky Keck, Kaitlynn Sommers, Balaji Abbabatulla, Cian Curtin, Lynne Phelan, Chaithanya Paradarami, Martin Shreffler, 24 March 2025

 

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, and MAGIC QUADRANT is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

 

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.