Factoring is a financial transaction and a type of debtor finance in which a business sells its accounts receivable to a third party at a discount. A business will sometimes factor its receivable assets to meet its present and immediate cash needs. Forfaiting is a factoring arrangement used in international trade finance by exporters who wish to sell their receivables to a forfaiter. Factoring is commonly referred to as accounts receivable factoring, invoice factoring, and sometimes accounts receivable financing. Accounts receivable financing is a term more accurately used to describe a form of asset based lending against accounts receivable. The Commercial Finance Association is the leading trade association of the asset-based lending and factoring industries.
Accounts payable (AP) is money owed by a business to its suppliers shown as a liability on a company's balance sheet. It is distinct from notes payable liabilities, which are debts created by formal legal instrument documents. An accounts payable department's main responsibility is to process and review transactions between the company and its suppliers and to make sure that all outstanding invoices from their suppliers are approved, processed, and paid. Processing an invoice includes recording important data from the invoice and inputting it into the company's financial, or bookkeeping, system. After this is accomplished, the invoices must go through the company's respective business process in order to be paid.
Vendor-managed inventory (VMI) is an inventory management practice in which a supplier of goods, usually the manufacturer, is responsible for optimizing the inventory held by a distributor.
A purchase order is a commercial document and first official offer issued by a buyer to a seller, indicating types, quantities, and agreed prices for products or services. It is used to control the purchasing of products and services from external suppliers. Purchase orders can be an essential part of enterprise resource planning system orders.
An invoice, bill or tab is a commercial document issued by a seller to a buyer relating to a sale transaction and indicating the products, quantities, and agreed-upon prices for products or services the seller had provided the buyer.
A receipt is a document acknowledging that a person has received money or property in payment following a sale or other transfer of goods or provision of a service. All receipts must have the date of purchase on them. If the recipient of the payment is legally required to collect sales tax or VAT from the customer, the amount would be added to the receipt, and the collection would be deemed to have been on behalf of the relevant tax authority. In many countries, a retailer is required to include the sales tax or VAT in the displayed price of goods sold, from which the tax amount would be calculated at the point of sale and remitted to the tax authorities in due course. Similarly, amounts may be deducted from amounts payable, as in the case of taxes withheld from wages. On the other hand, tips or other gratuities that are given by a customer, for example in a restaurant, would not form part of the payment amount or appear on the receipt.
Purchasing is the process a business or organization uses to acquire goods or services to accomplish its goals. Although there are several organizations that attempt to set standards in the purchasing process, processes can vary greatly between organizations.
E-procurement is the business-to-business or business-to-consumer or business-to-government purchase and sale of supplies, work, and services through the Internet as well as other information and networking systems, such as electronic data interchange and enterprise resource planning.
Business-to-business is a situation where one business makes a commercial transaction with another. This typically occurs when:
Strategic sourcing is the process of developing channels of supply at the lowest total cost, not just the lowest purchase price. It expands upon traditional organisational purchasing activities to embrace all activities within the procurement cycle, from specification to receipt, payment for goods and services to sourcing production lines where the labor market would increase firms' ROI. Strategic sourcing processes aim for continuous improvement and re-evaluation of the purchasing activities of an organisation.
B2B e-commerce, short for business-to-business electronic commerce, is the sale of goods or services between businesses via an online sales portal. In general, it is used to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of a company's sales efforts. Instead of receiving orders using human assets manually – by telephone or e-mail – orders are received digitally, reducing overhead costs.
Electronic billing or electronic bill payment and presentment, is when a seller such as company, organization, or group sends its bills or invoices over the internet, and customers pay the bills electronically. This replaces the traditional method where invoices were sent in paper form and payments were done by manual means such as sending cheques.
A purchasing card is a form of company charge card that allows goods and services to be procured without using a traditional purchasing process. In the UK, purchasing cards are usually referred to as procurement cards.
Dynamic discounting describes a collection of methods in which payment terms can be established between a buyer and supplier to accelerate payment for goods or services in return for a reduced price or discount.
Invoice Processing : involves the handling of incoming invoices from arrival to payment. Invoices have many variations and types. In general, invoices are grouped into two types:
Procure-to-pay is a term used in the software industry to designate a specific subdivision of the procurement process.
Supply chain financing is a form of financial transaction wherein a third party facilitates an exchange by financing the supplier on the customer's behalf. Also it refers to the techniques and practices used by banks and other financial institutions to manage the capital invested into the supply chain and reduce risk for the parties involved.
Electronic invoicing is a form of electronic billing. E-invoicing methods are used by trading partners, such as customers and their suppliers, to present and monitor transactional documents between one another and ensure the terms of their trading agreements are being met. These documents include invoices, purchase orders, debit notes, credit notes, payment terms, payment instructions and, remittance slips.
Tipalti is an accounting software financial technology business that provides accounts payable, procurement and global payments automation software for businesses. Tipalti is headquartered in San Mateo, CA, with offices in London UK, Vancouver Canada, Toronto Canada, Amsterdam Netherlands, Plano Texas, and R&D in Glil-Yam Israel.
Tungsten Network is a global electronic invoicing firm that provides supply chain financing services from international offices in the United Kingdom, United States, Bulgaria, Germany, and Malaysia. As a small- to medium-sized IT company, they have an estimated revenue of £31.3 million (GBP) as of July 2017. Tungsten Corporation Plc (TUNG) is reported to trade regularly on the London Stock Exchange. Main competitors in this arena include Tradeshift, Ariba, Basware, Taulia and iPayables.
