Percentage of invoice line items paid on time by the business entity
This measure calculates the percentage of invoice line items paid on time. An invoice line item is a single entry on an invoice. For example, an invoice for 10 red books at $1.00 each, and 20 blue books at $3.00 each, would be considered to have two invoice line items. This measure is part of a set of Process Efficiency measures that help companies optimize their "process accounts payable (AP)" process by minimizing waste and refining resource consumption.
Benchmark Data
Sorry! Not all users have access to all our resources. If you are not logged into your APQC account, please log in and try accessing again
Not a member yet? Members have access to all of our resources.
Learn about Membership| 25th | Median | 75th |
|---|---|---|
| - | 88.0% | - |
Compute this Measure
Units for this measure are percent.
Percentage of invoice line items your business entity pays on time
Key Terms
Paid on time refers to a payment that is sent by the customer within the payment terms indicated on the invoice. An example would be if terms are "2/10, net 30," payments have been satisfied if payment has been sent on or before the thirtieth day.
An invoice line item is a single entry on an invoice. For example an invoice for 10 red books at $1.00 each, and 20 blue books at $3.00 each, would be considered to have two line items.
Process efficiency represents how well a process converts its inputs into outputs. A process that converts 100% of the inputs into outputs without waste is more efficient than one that converts a similar amount of inputs into fewer outputs.
The metric value which represents the 50th percentile of a peer group. This could also be communicated as the metric value where half of the peer group sample shows lower performance than the expressed metric value or half of the peer group sample shows higher performance than the expressed metric value.
For survey purposes, a business entity is defined as an entity that:
- performs significant aspects of the processes for the surveys identified, or
- is part of a cost or revenue center within the company.
Within your organization, diverse departments may be geographically co-located, with closely integrated operations that form part of one "business entity" which may be a great distance apart. When trying to determine if related parts of your operation should be considered a single business entity, look for the following characteristics:
- Do they operate closely together?
- Do they serve many of the same customers?
- Do they support the same region or product group?
- Do they share any performance measures?
- Is data meaningful at a consolidated level?
Examples of business entity definition:
- A general ledger accounting unit located in Germany has two groups. One performs general ledger accounting for the corporate headquarters, which has three business units. The other group does general ledger accounting for one of the three business units. In spite of their geographic co-location, their roles are substantially different and consolidating their data into a single response would make it less meaningful. Each group should be treated as a separate business entity.
- Three business units within a corporation use a shared services center for accounts payable and expense reimbursement, but are self-supporting for the other financial processes. The best approach is to make the shared services centre a separate business entity for accounts payable and expense reimbursement, and to retain the three original business units for the other financial processes.
- A global manufacturing company has five plant locations, each manufacturing product and each with its own logistics operations. For purposes of completing a manufacturing and logistics survey, they should be treated as five separate business entities.