Procure to pay
Everything a company buys, from raw material to a hotel night, is a business event that leaves documents behind: an order, a receipt, an invoice, a payment. The documents decide how each step is posted. How finely depends on three things: the type of cost, its materiality, and what the law requires. Software vendors call this the spend process.
Who runs it
The spend process is split across departments, and each stage has its owners. Acunomic's Universal Spend Process assigns the roles:
- Administer the process
- Administrator
- Govern and set policies
- Controller, finance manager
- Request a company card
- Purchaser, expense submitter
- Define the budget, plan
- Controller, cost centre manager
- Subscribe, order
- Purchaser, controller
- Collect and recognise the documents
- Accounts payable manager
One blueprint for every purchase
The process runs the same way for goods, services and expenses. It is defined and governed, budgeted, then scheduled or subscribed. After that, two pairs of tracks run side by side. Order and receive are the supply. Expense and expend are the money: the expense is the cost the company incurs, the expenditure is the money that leaves the bank. Accounting runs underneath the whole way, not only at the end.
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A payable is not an expense. The invoice creates a liability; which period the cost belongs to is a separate question, answered with accruals and deferrals. Card transactions and refunds are payments, not types of cost.
Four types of cost, four lanes
Where a cost arises decides which documents prove it. Goods arrive with a delivery and a goods receipt; services with a statement of work and a service note; software and advertising with usage and a card transaction; travel with a request, a booking and the trip itself. All four end in accounts payable or an equivalent step, then in a payment, then in reconciliation.
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Travel is procurement too. A travel request is a purchase requisition, a booking is a purchase order, and the landing, the hotel checkout or the car return are the service notes that mark the order as delivered. Booking and support fees work like landed costs.
Reconciliation is the shadow work
Most of the work sits at the end, bringing expenditure and expense together. The first reconciliation matches each payment to its payable and clears the open item; the second reconciles the bank statement to the ledger. Where they disagree, the difference has a reason: a card transaction whose invoice has not arrived, a prepayment for a service still to come, a currency difference, a private expense on a company card.
From document to posting
No posting without a document. Swiss law requires documentary proof for every single posting (Art. 957a OR); German law requires that every business event can be traced from its origin to its settlement (§ 238 HGB). The document also decides how the step is posted: a booking confirmation or a pro-forma invoice can carry a prepayment, the tax invoice carries the input tax, the bank statement closes the payment.
One business event becomes two transactions: the invoice creates the payable, the payment clears it. A system that writes both into one line loses the trail an auditor follows.
How finely to post
Materiality decides how much detail a posting needs, and travel shows the trade-off best. A monthly collective invoice from a travel company means fewer documents, but more postings, more delay, and accruals for the last days of the month. One invoice per booking, paid by card, means more documents, but fewer postings and nothing to accrue at month end. A monthly card statement posted as one supplier bill looks simplest and is not advised.
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One invoice per booking, paid by card
Most automation
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Monthly collective invoice
Common
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Monthly card statement as one bill
Not advised
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|---|---|---|---|
| Documents | More: one per supplier and booking | Fewer: one a month | One a month |
| Postings | Fewer | More, through a transit account that never reaches zero | One, coded at month end |
| Month end | Nothing to accrue | Accruals for the last days | All the work in the last days |
| Currencies and VAT | Each line keeps its currency and tax code | Lines from the statement | Mixed currencies and tax codes, sometimes from several countries |
The floor the law sets. A valid invoice for every supply that claims input tax. In Germany, structured e-invoices between domestic businesses: for supplies from 2027 if the issuer's prior-year turnover exceeded EUR 800,000, from 2028 for all (§ 14, § 27 Abs. 38 UStG). Books and vouchers kept for ten years in Switzerland (Art. 958f OR); accounting vouchers and invoices for eight years in Germany (§ 147 AO, § 14b UStG).
Swiss law names materiality for financial reporting: it must contain what is material (Art. 958c OR), and with up to CHF 100,000 of net revenue a company may even skip the accruals and work from cash in and cash out (Art. 958b OR). No level of materiality removes the document the law requires.
Business travel: where the rules collide
A hotel night abroad carries the VAT of the country where the hotel stands (§ 3a UStG, Art. 8 MWSTG). It cannot be claimed in the home return, only through that country's refund procedure, and a document that is good enough at home can fail there.
Swiss company, hotel in Switzerland, invoice in the employee's name
if the stay is obviously business expense (ESTV, MWST-Info 09, section 1.6).
Foreign company, hotel in Switzerland, the same invoice, refund claim
The invoice must be in the company's name; till receipts and train tickets never qualify, whatever the amount. At least CHF 500 a year, filed by 30 June of the following year (Art. 153 to 155 MWSTV; ESTV, MWST-Info 18).
German company, hotel in Germany, bill above EUR 250
once the transition ends: for stays from 2027 if the hotel's prior-year turnover exceeded EUR 800,000, from 2028 for all (§ 14, § 27 Abs. 38 UStG). Tickets and bills up to EUR 250 stay outside the duty (§§ 33, 34 UStDV).
Per diems and mileage allowances are flat amounts paid to the employee, not supplier invoices, so they carry no input tax. Germany sets the meal allowance in law: EUR 28 for a full day away and EUR 14 for the days of arrival and departure (§ 9 Abs. 4a EStG).
What it is, and what it is for
A type of cost (Kostenart) says what was bought: material, purchased services, staff, other operating expense. Whether a cost sits above or below the gross-margin line depends on something else: what it was used for. A freelancer on a client project is cost of sales; the same freelancer working on the company website is administration.
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Both countries let a company choose. Swiss law allows the income statement by nature or by function (Art. 959b OR), German law the total cost method or the cost of sales method (§ 275 HGB). Only the layout by function has a gross-margin line, the "Bruttoergebnis vom Umsatz" (§ 275 Abs. 3 HGB). So every purchase line needs two answers: its nature, which is the account, and its function, which is a cost centre or function on the line.
Data model
Behind every document is a record, and behind every posting a table row. The tables of each system, with their keys and how they connect: which order line a receipt points to, which line a bill matches.