Set Early Payment Discounts Preferences: Before Invoice Approval

Early Pay Discounts User Guide: Before Invoice Approval

Open and download the latest version of Coupa Pay's Before Invoice Approval User Guide here. 

Overview

Before Invoice Approval helps you get paid earlier by allowing you to set and update preferred payment discount terms. You can apply these terms automatically to all or selected Coupa customers across some or all of your purchase order-backed invoices. Your customers can also set payment terms specific to you.

This guide shows the basics of activating your Coupa Supplier Portal (CSP) user account, so you can opt in to Before Invoice Approval with your Coupa customers.

Your customer can offer you both Before and After Invoice Approval discounts. To enable After Invoice Approval, see Early Pay Discounts User Guide: After Invoice Approval for Suppliers

Offer a discount at transaction level

See also: Manually accelerate an individual payment

Offer a global discount

See also: Automatically accelerate all payments

You receive notifications of customers who are ready to accept early payment discount offers, and you can set your payment terms directly from the Coupa Supplier Portal (CSP) notifications or accelerate from a purchase order (PO) email.

You can change a net payment term (for example, Net 90) to a discount payment term (for example, 3%/30 Net 90).

1. Opt in to EPD Before Invoice Approval

For you to receive and accept discounted payment terms from a Coupa buyer, the buyer must first enable your company in their Coupa core system, and you must be registered as a supplier on the CSP.  You must additionally have Admin rights in the CSP to access the Early Pay Discounts (EPD) preferred payment terms.

Register as a new supplier

1. In the CSP welcome email from the Coupa buyer, select Join Coupa to open the CSP registration login.
2. On the Basics screens, create your login and enter your company information.
3. On the Payment screen, you are asked if you would like to offer discounts to get paid faster. Here you can see and select any discount payment terms your Coupa buyer has offered under Payment Discount Preferences:
   
   
   • Under Your default payment term, select the field next to a net term, for example Net 30.
   • If the buyer has set up discounted terms, under Automatically replace with this discount a dropdown menu with one or more terms appears, for example 1%/10 Net 30 means you offer a 1% discount if payment is made up to 10 days after the invoice date.
   • You can select one discounted term per net term.
4. Activate the checkbox Use these preferences for all your customers to apply these preferred terms globally to your Coupa customers on the CSP. If not, you can choose to accelerate invoices (Get Paid Faster) at the transaction level. For more information, see Opt in to Before Invoice Approval discounts.
5. Select Next to open a confirmation message.
6. Select Enhance your Coupa profile to open Customer Setup on the CSP.

If the payment term you selected matches one of the discount terms on your Coupa customer side, that discount is automatically assigned to the transaction.

Set up as an existing supplier

1. In the CSP, go to Setup > Admin > Early Payment.
2. Select Early Pay Discount on the left of the Admin page.
3. To set preferred discount terms for Global Discount Preferences, select the Edit preferences button in the top right corner. Otherwise, select the Edit button for individual Customers at the bottom of the page.
4. Use the dropdown menus to select the preferred early payment discount terms you will accept from the buyer:
   
   
   • Next to the net term under Your original payment term, select the dropdown menu for Your preferred term, where one or more terms appear.
   • You can select one discounted term per net term.
5. Fill in the name and email of the person or group at your company who has approved your preferred discount payment term (required).
   
   
   Note

   This information is used for tracking or audit purposes only, and does not add an approval step anywhere in the discount process.

6. Activate the checkbox Apply to ALL invoices to apply these preferred terms globally to your Coupa customers on the CSP. If not, you can choose to accelerate invoices (Get Paid Faster) at the transaction level. For more information, see Opt in to Before Invoice Approval discounts.

2. Opt in to Before Invoice Approval discounts

When a Coupa buyer issues a purchase order, you will be notified by email and/or see the order in the CSP. You can then offer a discount either from a purchase order (PO) or a PO-backed invoice.

Depending on your Early Pay Discount settings in the CSP, your invoice from a buyer may be discounted in one of two ways:

Manually accelerate an individual payment

When Apply preferred terms to all PO/invoices is set to No in your Customer Preferences, you can use the Get Paid Faster function:

1. From the PO notification email from Coupa, select Get Paid Faster to go directly to the CSP login.
2. After you log in, the Early Payments dialog opens, where you see the Current Payment Term (for example, Net 90) and a dropdown menu with one or more discounted New Payment Terms (for example 3%/30 Net 90). Only those payment term options are visible that have the same net payment terms as your preferred discount terms.
   
   
3. You can either select the discount term in the dialog, or return to the invoice if necessary and then select the Get Paid Faster button in the invoice, next to the Payment Term field.
   
   
4. In the Early Payments dialog, select the checkbox I am authorized to choose payment terms, and then Update.
5. A pop-up window opens to ask if you want to update your default early payment discounts on all future orders and invoices with the specific customer. If you select Update, your Early Pay Discount preferences open for this customer.
   
   
   Note

   Customer-specific payment term preferences override default customer preferences.

6. Select Submit when you are ready to send the discounted invoice.
7. You see the confirmation message: Congrats! You have discounted payment for invoice #. The new payment term is applied to your invoice.
8. The invoice status changes to Pending Approval and the invoice is sent to your Coupa buyer.

When a discount payment term is applied to a PO or an invoice, that payment term is available on the PO/invoice and it has a Terms updated to get paid faster notification. You are notified of the action in the message bar and the change is recorded in the History section of the CSP.

Automatically accelerate all payments

If you have enabled preferred discount payment terms by default for all invoices or for a specific customer, your invoices will be automatically discounted when they match a buyer's preferred terms:

1. In the CSP, go to Invoices or Orders. If you have more than one Coupa customer, use Select Customer to see your specific buyer's invoices.
2. Select Create invoice from PO and then enter the invoice number relevant information.
3. Under General Info, you see the Terms updated to get paid faster info message instead of the Get Paid Faster button.
4. The discount is automatically assigned to the transaction.