Payment practice is one of the disclosure requirements according to the EU Sustainability Reporting Standards regarding governance reporting. This article covers the fundamental principles of the underlying KPIs, describe the complexities calculating them accurately, and highlights how our AFC Invoice Analytics product automate this area with synergies to AFC ESG.
Fundamental principles
Companies are required to provide information on their payment practices to support transparency about these practices given the importance of timely cash flows to business partners, especially with respect to late payments to small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
The objective of this disclosure requirement is to provide insights on the contractual payment terms and the average actual payment terms especially as to how these impact SMEs and specifically with respect to late payments to SMEs.
From a data perspective, the KPIs are as follows:
- Average time to pay an invoice (number of days)
- Standard payment terms (number of days)
- Percentage of payments aligned with standard payment terms
- Number of legal proceedings during the period for late payments
Furthermore, companies to supplement complementary information necessary to provide sufficient context.
Exploring the challenges
Solitwork’s innovative AFC ESG & Carbon Accounting product provides a streamlined solution for measuring and managing those critical metrics.
Proper analysis requires:
- Supplier invoice data on transactional level
- Not only data from a few months– it requires a certain data history to get accurate in those calculations.
Due to the above it is a complex task to execute in e.g. Excel. Moreover, in some cases standard contractual payment terms may differ significantly depending on country or type of supplier. In such cases, information about the standard terms per main categories of suppliers or country or geographical region are examples of additional contextual information to explain the disclosures.
How AFC Invoice Analytics automates the KPIs
Solitwork’s AFC Invoice Analytics product does, among others, automate the KPIs relevant to payment practice reporting by:
- Loading in accounts receivable and accounts payable data on transactional level
- Having history of normally 1 year+
- Calculating per invoice; payment terms, actual payment terms, payment terms compliance
- Calculating per counterparty; weighted average payment terms/actual payment terms/payment terms compliance
Calculating these metrics on invoice level provides unique possibilities to generate the metrics of the payment practice reporting.
Besides providing the metrics of payment practice reporting, AFC Invoice Analytics provides companies with the possibility to optimize their cash flow by working capital improvements driven from actions on inappropriate payment terms and a focused cash collection process. It enables companies to forecast the future cash flow using machine learning technology!
