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Metrics type: Supporting Metrics • Category: Vendor Master
Share of vendor invoices paid on or before their due date. The number that tells you whether AP is paying to terms, protecting supplier relationships, and capturing early-payment discounts, or quietly burning both.

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At a glance

The percentage of vendor invoices paid on or before their due date over the trailing 30 days, compared with the prior period, across the selected Company Codes. Every vendor invoice in FI-AP carries payment terms that set a due date. This card measures how many of the invoices cleared in the window were paid by that date. A high rate means accounts payable is running clean payment runs to terms and keeping suppliers happy; a falling rate means late payments, which strain supplier relationships, risk supply interruptions, forfeit early-payment discounts, and can incur late fees.

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Calculation

Calculated automatically from your SAP data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.

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Worked example

A manufacturer running SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition with two Company Codes: 1000 UK Manufacturing Ltd (GBP) and 2000 EU Sourcing BV (EUR). The automatic payment run (F110) executes twice a week. The window is 23 May 26 to 22 Jun 26, compared with the prior 30 days. Five things to notice:
  1. The blended rate is 92.4%, above the <90% alert. The card stays quiet. The prior period read 94.1%, so the rate has slipped 1.7 points: not enough to alert, but enough to watch on the trend line.
  2. The Net 30 group carries most of the lateness. 20 of the 32 late invoices are standard Net 30. That usually points at a payment-run cadence problem: if F110 runs twice a week, invoices that fall due between runs can slip a day or two past their due date. Tightening the run schedule or moving the run day fixes most of these.
  3. Immediate-terms invoices have the worst on-time ratio. 8 of 30 on-receipt invoices were late, a 73% rate. Immediate terms leave no buffer, so any approval delay or a missed run makes them late. These are the invoices most exposed to the payment-run cadence.
  4. Late payment is not free. Two of the late Net 30 invoices were on 2/10 Net 30 discount terms. Paying late did not just risk the supplier relationship, it forfeited the early-payment discount. A persistent late-payment habit on discount terms is a measurable cash cost, not just a soft relationship cost.
  5. The card keys on the clearing date of the open item, not the F110 proposal date. An invoice selected in a payment proposal but not actually cleared until the bank file posts is on time only if the clearing date lands on or before the due date. This is why the card reflects real payment behaviour rather than payment intent.

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Sibling cards merchants should reference together

The on-time rate is the headline of AP discipline. Read it with the payables and vendor cards that explain where lateness comes from.

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Reconciling against SAP

Where to look in S/4HANA Cloud: The closest native equivalents inside the SAP Fiori launchpad are:
Manage Supplier Line Items Fiori app (the modern equivalent of transaction FBL1N) filtered to cleared items with due date and clearing date Schedule Accounts Payable Jobs / Automatic Payment (transaction F110) logs and proposal history for what was paid and when Display Supplier Balances for the AP position by vendor Embedded Analytics: AP open- and cleared-item CDS views exposing baseline date, payment terms, due date, and clearing date
To match this card, run Manage Supplier Line Items filtered to items cleared in the window, compare each item’s clearing date against its net due date (baseline date plus payment terms), and compute the on-time share. Scope to the same Company Codes as the dashboard filter, and repeat for the prior period to reproduce the vs-prior comparison. Common mistakes when comparing against SAP’s own reports:
  • Keying on the payment proposal date instead of the clearing date. F110 selects items in a proposal before the payment actually clears. The card uses the clearing date of the open item, which is when the payment really happened. A proposal-based comparison will overstate on-time performance.
  • Using the discount date instead of the net due date. An invoice on 2/10 Net 30 has a discount date (day 10) and a net due date (day 30). The card keys on the net due date unless configured otherwise. Comparing against the discount date will understate on-time.
  • Including non-invoice open items. Down payments, credit memos, and clearing-only items are not invoices paid to terms. Filter to genuine vendor invoices, as the card does.
Why our number may legitimately differ from SAP’s reports:

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Known limitations / merchant FAQs

Does the card measure when I scheduled the payment or when it actually cleared? When it cleared. The card keys on the clearing date of the vendor open item, which is when the payment genuinely posted, not when F110 selected the invoice in a proposal. This is deliberate: a payment proposed on time but cleared late is a late payment to the supplier, and the card reflects that reality. On-time against the net due date or the early-discount date? The net due date by default. An invoice on 2/10 Net 30 is on time if paid by day 30, even though the early discount was available at day 10. If your AP policy is to always capture the discount, the more meaningful benchmark is the discount date, and the rate measured against it will be lower. Pair this card with the discount-capture view if early payment is a priority. My Net 30 invoices are the main source of lateness. What does that point at? Usually the payment-run cadence. If F110 runs twice a week, invoices that fall due between runs can slip a day or two past their due date. Net 30 has the most invoices, so it absorbs most of the slippage. Moving the run day or adding a run often lifts the rate without any other change. Is paying late ever the right call? Some businesses deliberately stretch payables to manage cash, which is a legitimate working-capital lever. But it has costs: forfeited early-payment discounts, strained supplier relationships, and the risk of late fees or supply holds. This card makes the trade-off visible so it is a choice, not an accident. Pair it with the cash cards to see the cash side of the decision. Does the automatic payment program (F110) vs manual payments change the count? No. The card sees the clearing date on the cleared open item regardless of whether F110 or a manual payment (F-53 or the Post Outgoing Payments app) cleared it. Both paths count equally toward the on-time rate. Why a percentage and not a count of late invoices? Because a count is hard to read without context: 32 late invoices is alarming in a small AP shop and trivial in a large one. The rate normalises for volume, so it is comparable across periods and Company Codes. The underlying late count is still available on drill-in. How fresh is the rate? It refreshes on a regular cadence. S/4HANA Cloud exposes AP open- and cleared-item data through live APIs, and Vortex IQ’s connector polls frequently, so the rate and its prior-period comparison update within minutes of payment runs clearing. For invoice-level detail, pivot into Manage Supplier Line Items.

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Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Vendor Payment On-Time Rate is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across SAP and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. Start for free or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.