Share of vendor Bills paid on or before their due date. A low rate risks supplier goodwill, late fees, and lost early-pay discounts.
At a glance
The percentage of vendor Bills paid on or before their due date in the period. Where AP aging shows the backlog, this card shows the behaviour: are you actually paying suppliers on time, cycle after cycle? A high rate keeps supplier goodwill, protects your terms, and captures early-payment discounts; a low rate quietly erodes all three and eventually shows up as tightened terms or stop-supply just when you need stock. The card reads paid Bills against their due dates in the AP sub-ledger, dimension-tagged in Sage Intacct so finance can pivot the on-time rate by Vendor, Department, Location, or Entity and find exactly where payment discipline is slipping.
| What it counts | Bills paid in the period where the payment date is on or before the Bill’s due date, as a percentage of all Bills paid in the period. The due date is derived from the Bill date plus the vendor’s payment terms (Net-30, Net-60, and so on). |
| On-time definition | Payment date less than or equal to due date. Configurable per workspace to add a grace window (some businesses count “within 2 days of due” as on time to absorb Bacs timing). |
| Discount terms | Where terms include an early-pay discount (2/10 Net-30), a separate read can measure discount-capture rate (paid within the discount window) alongside the on-time rate. |
| Disputed Bills | A Bill withheld pending a genuine dispute can be excluded from the denominator so a legitimate hold does not penalise the rate. Configurable in the field map. |
| Currency | The rate is currency-independent. Multi-Entity Console computes it per entity and at the consolidated level. |
| Entity scope | Card respects the dashboard entity filter. |
| Dimensional cut | Each paid Bill carries Intacct dimensions through. Pivot by Vendor to see which suppliers you pay late, by Department to find the cost centre sitting on approvals, by Location to compare sites. |
| Time window | 30D vs prior |
| Alert trigger | <90% on-time, sentiment vendor_payment. Configurable per workspace. Well-run AP functions hold 95%+ on time; sustained readings below 90% mean a process or cash problem. |
| Roles | owner, finance |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Sage data. The card divides the count of Bills paid on or before their due date by the total Bills paid in the period and expresses it as a percentage. 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 B2B homeware brand on Sage Intacct, single entity, GBP base currency, roughly 11M GBP annual revenue buying finished goods on Net-30 and Net-60 from UK and EU suppliers, settling via weekly Bacs runs. Several core suppliers offer 2/10 Net-30 early-pay discounts. Snapshot 14 Apr 26. Aging and payment basis from due date. In the trailing period 420 Bills were paid.| Payment timing | Bills paid | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Paid within early-pay discount window | 96 | 23% |
| Paid on time (by due date, after discount window) | 252 | 60% |
| Paid 1-15 days late | 49 | 12% |
| Paid 16+ days late | 23 | 5% |
| Vendor Payment On-Time Rate (this card) | 348 / 420 | 83% |
- 83% is below the 90% alert line, and the gap is costing money in three distinct ways. First, the 17% paid late risks supplier goodwill and term tightening. Second, any late Bill that carried an early-pay discount forfeited it. Third, persistent lateness invites late-fee clauses to be enforced. The card surfaces the rate; the action is to find the late cohort. On this account the AP Aging 60+ Days card was simultaneously rising, confirming this was a real backlog building rather than a one-off Bacs timing miss.
- The 30D vs prior trend separates a blip from a trend. A single late Bacs run can dent the rate for one period without meaning anything structural. Here the rate had fallen from 94% to 83% over two cycles, an 11-point decline that is unambiguously a trend. Pivot by Department and the cause concentrated: one cost centre’s approver had a growing backlog of unapproved Bills, so they kept missing the Bacs cut-off. That is a workflow fix (delegate approval, move the cut-off), not a cash problem, and the dimension cut found it fast.
- The 23% discount-capture slice is money actively earned, and the late cohort is money left behind. Of the 96 Bills paid within the discount window, each captured roughly 2% off. Every late Bill that had a discount available did the opposite. Reading the discount-capture rate alongside the on-time rate quantifies the margin at stake: on a supplier base with widespread 2/10 terms, lifting on-time payment from 83% to 95% can recover a meaningful slice of COGS purely through captured discounts, with no negotiation required.
- A low rate driven by cash is a different problem from one driven by process. If the on-time rate falls because there genuinely is not enough cash to pay on time, the fix is upstream in collections and cash flow, not in AP. If it falls because Bills are stuck in approval while the cash sits idle, the fix is the workflow. Read this card against your live cash position and Days Since Last Bank Reconciliation: on this account cash was healthy, which pointed firmly at process.
- Protect the rate on your core suppliers above all. Pivot the on-time rate by Vendor and weight by spend. Being slightly late to a long-tail one-off supplier costs little; being late to one of the handful of core suppliers carrying most of your spend (see Active Vendors) risks the relationships you most depend on. The most useful read is not the blended 83%, it is the on-time rate on your top 20 suppliers specifically. If that is healthy, the blended figure is far less worrying.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
| Card | Why pair it with Vendor Payment On-Time Rate |
|---|---|
| AP Aging 60+ Days | The backlog twin: aging shows what is overdue, this card shows whether you are still falling behind. |
| Active Vendors | Weight the on-time rate by your core suppliers; lateness to the few that matter most is the real risk. |
| Days Since Last Bank Reconciliation | Separates a cash cause from a process cause when the rate falls. |
| Sage COGS Total | Captured early-pay discounts reduce COGS; this rate drives the discount-capture opportunity. |
| AR Balance (live) | Cash trapped in receivables is a common upstream cause of paying suppliers late. |
| Average Landed Cost per Unit | Lost discounts and late fees feed straight into landed cost. |
| Sage Health Score | Payment discipline is a control input to the composite. |
Reconciling against Sage
Where to look in Sage: The native Sage Intacct views to run side by side with this card:Reports → Accounts Payable → Vendor Payment History (paid Bills with payment dates, the raw material for on-time analysis) Reports → Accounts Payable → AP Payment Register (the record of each payment run, including Bacs files) Accounts Payable → Bills (open and paid Bills with their due dates derived from terms) Reports → Accounts Payable → AP Aging Report (the backlog this rate is the leading indicator of) Interactive Custom Report (ICR) built on the AP data source comparing each paid Bill’s payment date to its due date, computing the on-time percentage, pivoted by Vendor and Department dimensionsIntacct does not always ship a single native “on-time rate” report, so the closest reconciliation is to export the Vendor Payment History with Bill due dates and compute payment-date-less-than-or-equal-to-due-date yourself, which is exactly what the card automates. Confirm whether your terms set the due date from Bill date or from goods-receipt date, because that choice shifts every due date and therefore the on-time rate. For Multi-Entity Console accounts, compute per entity, since entities may run separate Bacs schedules. Common reconciliation pitfalls:
- Due-date derivation. The due date depends on the payment terms attached to the Bill and on whether terms count from Bill date or receipt date. A mismatch here moves the whole population on or off time.
- Payment date vs Bacs settlement date. The date a Bacs file is submitted is not the date funds clear. Decide whether “paid” means submitted or cleared and apply it consistently; a 2-3 day Bacs cycle can flip borderline Bills.
- Partial payments. A Bill paid in two instalments can be partly on time and partly late. The field map sets whether the Bill counts on the first payment, the final payment, or proportionally.
| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Due-date basis | Either | Terms counted from Bill date vs goods-receipt date shift every due date. |
| Grace window | Either | A configured grace window (within 2 days of due) raises the rate vs a strict same-day cut. |
| Submitted vs cleared | Either | Whether “paid” means Bacs submission or funds cleared moves borderline Bills. |
| Disputed Bill exclusion | Card may read higher | Excluding legitimately disputed Bills from the denominator avoids penalising a valid hold. |
| Partial-payment treatment | Either | First-payment vs final-payment vs proportional counting changes split Bills. |
| Discount-window vs due-date | Either | A discount-capture read uses the discount window, not the due date, which is a different (lower) rate. |
| One-time vendors | Either | Some analyses exclude one-time vendors; the card includes them unless filtered. |
| Card | Expected relationship | What the comparison reveals |
|---|---|---|
| AP Aging 60+ Days | Leading indicator | A falling on-time rate precedes a rising 60+ aging share by about one cycle. Watch the rate to predict the backlog. |
| Sage COGS Total | Margin lever | Captured early-pay discounts reduce COGS; lifting on-time payment is a no-negotiation margin gain. |
| AR Balance (live) | Upstream cause | Cash trapped in receivables is a frequent reason suppliers get paid late. Fix collections to fix payment. |
| Active Vendors | Concentration | Apply the rate to your core suppliers; lateness to the few you depend on is the real relationship risk. |
| Sage Health Score | Component | Payment discipline feeds the control and relationship components of the composite. |