Source-to-Pay (S2P)

Source-to-Pay is the complete procurement lifecycle, from identifying a need and sourcing a supplier through to paying them — including sourcing, RFQs, competitive bidding, vendor management, purchasing, and payment.

S2P is the broadest common framework for describing procurement end to end. Its downstream half — from purchase requisition to payment — is usually called Procure-to-Pay (P2P).

The sourcing half covers identifying suppliers, RFQs, competitive bidding, and supplier management. The purchasing half covers requisitions, purchase orders, receiving, invoicing, and payment.

Treating the two halves as one connected process avoids the manual handoff, and the re-keying that goes with it, between the decision to buy from a supplier and the order itself.