Zip Launches Intake-to-Pay Tool to Unify Procurement Spend

Zip has added procure-to-pay capabilities to its intake-to-procure platform.

The addition of these capabilities creates the company’s Intake-to-Pay, a unified platform for procurement that orchestrates spend from initial request to spend approval, payment processing and payouts, Zip said in a Monday (May 15) press release.

“The launch of Zip Intake-to-Pay allows businesses to implement a holistic and easy-to-adopt procurement experience that requires no additional training,” Zip Co-Founder and CEO Rujul Zaparde said in the release. “Zip is the only solution that starts with intake and solves for the end user’s experience to drive greater adoption across the organization, through to seamless PO [purchase order] management and payments, which leads to improved spend visibility, integrity and control.”

PYMNTS research has found that retail and manufacturing companies are investing in digital technology to improve procurement operations and limit business disruptions caused by future supply chain breakdowns.

Among retailers, 31% are investing in procurement systems, and another 53% plan to do so. Among manufacturers, 42% are already investing in upgrading their procurement technology and another 44% plan to do so, according to “Digital Payments: Modernizing Procurement Processes,” a PYMNTS and Corcentric collaboration.

The new features added to Zip’s platform include Zip PO Management, Zip AP Automation and Zip B2B Payments, according to the press release.

These features allow businesses to create and manage purchase orders from approved requests, dynamically route invoices for approval, and pay both domestically and globally, the release said.

“Better spend management truly begins at the point of intake,” Zaparde said in the release.

Zip’s new solution solves the challenges of supporting today’s distributed purchasing patterns and preventing non-compliant, non-PO-backed spending, Zaparde said.

“Intake-to-Pay solves the ubiquitous challenges by unifying the entire spend lifecycle and ensuring adoption across the entire employee base,” Zaparde said.

These capabilities launched eight months after Zip partnered with digital contracting platform Ironclad to provide a unified, end-to-end solution to their joint customers.

With this two-way integration, employees can initiate spend requests through Zip, the platform routes requests and contracts to Ironclad, Ironclad performs a legal review and approval, and Ironclad sends approvals and completed contracts to Zip.