What proportion of supplier invoices you paid on time, the discipline metric behind supply continuity and early-payment discounts.
At a glance
The percentage of vendor invoices paid on or before their due date over the window. It measures payment discipline rather than balance, so a business can carry healthy AP and still score well, or carry low AP and score badly if it pays everything late. Below 90% the risk profile shifts: late fees accrue, early-payment discounts are missed, and suppliers start tightening terms or prioritising other buyers, which threatens supply continuity.
| What it counts | The number of vendor invoices settled on or before due date, divided by all vendor invoices that became due in the window. In F&O this is derived from the vendor payment journal settlements matched against invoice due dates; in Business Central it is computed from applied Vendor Ledger Entries comparing payment posting date against invoice due date. |
| What it is not | Not an amount. A single late £50,000 invoice and a single late £50 invoice each count as one late payment. Use AP aging for value-weighted exposure. |
| Currency | Rate metric, currency-independent. Invoices across currencies are counted equally regardless of value. |
| Multi-Company | Aggregated across the selected legal entities. Each entity’s payment behaviour can also be viewed standalone. |
| Time window | 30D vsP (current rate vs the prior 30-day period) |
| Alert trigger | <90% paid on time |
| Roles | owner, finance |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Microsoft Dynamics 365 data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A UK beauty brand on Business Central, single company, snapshot 14 Apr 26. Over the trailing 30 days, 240 vendor invoices fell due. Finance runs a weekly payment batch.| Payment outcome | Invoice count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Paid on or before due date | 204 | 85.0% |
| Paid 1-7 days late | 26 | 10.8% |
| Paid 8+ days late | 10 | 4.2% |
| Invoices due in window | 240 | 100% |
| Vendor Payment On-Time Rate (this card) | 85.0% |
- 85.0% is below the alert threshold of <90%. The card fires. The team is missing roughly one invoice in seven, which is enough to erode supplier goodwill over a quarter.
- Most lateness is mild. 26 of the 36 late invoices were only 1-7 days over. That points to batch-timing, not a cash shortage: a payment run scheduled a few days earlier would lift the rate above 90% with no extra cash outlay.
- The count is unweighted. A late £50 stationery invoice hurts the rate exactly as much as a late £40,000 freight invoice. To see where the money is, read AP Aging alongside.
- vsP gives the trend. If last period was 92%, the drop to 85% is the alert-worthy event. A stable 85% is a chronic process gap; a sudden drop is usually a one-off batch miss or a staffing gap in AP.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
On-time rate is the discipline metric. Pair it with the value-weighted and cash-side cards to see whether late payment is a timing habit or a liquidity problem.| Card | Why pair |
|---|---|
| AP Aging ≥ 60+ Days | The value-weighted consequence of a falling on-time rate. Count vs money. |
| Active Vendors | The supplier base whose goodwill this rate protects. |
| Cash Collected | What comes in funds what goes out. A dip here often explains a dip in on-time payment. |
| Days Sales Outstanding | Slow collections on the AR side frequently force slow payments on the AP side. |
Reconciling against Microsoft Dynamics 365
Where to look in Business Central / Finance & Operations:BC: Vendor Ledger Entries (compare Document Date / Due Date against the applied payment’s posting date) BC: Reports > Purchasing > Vendor - Payment Receipt / Vendor Detail Aged F&O: Accounts payable > Inquiries and reports > Payments > Vendor payment journal (settlement dates) F&O: Accounts payable > Vendors > Vendor transactions (invoice-to-settlement trail)To match this card, take each invoice that fell due in the window, find its settling payment, and flag any where the payment posting date is after the due date. The on-time rate is the unflagged count divided by the total. BC exposes this most cleanly through applied Vendor Ledger Entries; F&O through the payment journal settlement records. Why our number may legitimately differ:
| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| On-time defined by payment date vs payment-issue date | Either | A payment posted on the due date but cleared by the bank later may be on-time by ledger and late by bank settlement. The card uses the ledger posting date. |
| Partial payments | Either | An invoice partly paid on time and partly late may be counted by first settlement, last settlement, or proportionally, depending on field-map configuration. |
| Grace-period / terms nuance | Either | Some terms include a discount-or-net split (e.g. 2/10 net 30). The card compares against the net due date unless configured otherwise. |
| Due-date adjustments | Either | Manually edited due dates on a vendor invoice change the on-time test. The card reads the current due date on the ledger entry. |
| OData / Dataverse sync lag | Card up to 15 min behind | A payment that just posted in D365 lifts the rate; the card catches up within the cache window. |