Free tool · 2 minutes
What does one purchase order actually cost you?
From requisition to payment. Answer a few questions and see your fully-loaded cost per PO, where the money goes across the process, and what automating each step would save.
Your process
InputsDefault 1.3, typical when some POs receive several invoices.
Salary plus about 35% employer charges and benefits. This drives roughly 65% of the number, so set it to yours.
Where the money goes, 12 process steps
Top opportunities to cut the cost
RecommendationsTouchless 3-way matchingMedium effort
Auto-match invoice ↔ PO ↔ receipt so staff only touch the exceptions, not every line.
Digitalise PO creation & sendingMedium effort
Auto-generate POs from requisitions and send them electronically (EDI / cXML) instead of email or PDF.
Workflow-based approvalsLow effort
Replace the email chase with rules-based routing and auto-approval within thresholds.
PDF / OCR invoice ingestionLow effort
Capture incoming invoices with OCR instead of keying them in. The single fastest AP cost cut.
How we calculate this
Bottom-up should-cost model: for each of the 12 P2P steps we take hands-on touch time (not wall-clock cycle time) times your loaded hourly rate times a rework multiplier on matching and approval steps, plus a per-document system and transaction cost. Touch-time bands per automation level are calibrated to APQC, Ardent Partners, Hackett and IOFM benchmark ranges. A fully-manual mid-market profile lands near the published manual end (about 45 to 55 euros per PO, 20 to 23 per invoice) and a fully-automated profile near best-in-class (about 3.6 per invoice). Every figure is your input where you gave one, and a benchmark default otherwise.