Understanding Supplier Portals for Canadian Businesses

Business interactions with suppliers across provinces and borders can be time-consuming, expensive, and frustrating. Supplier portals, which are also called vendor portals, solve these challenges while ensuring compliance with Canadian regulations.

Choose the right supplier portal for your business needs, including your accounts payable department and financial management.

What is a supplier portal?

A supplier portal is an integrated online platform shared by your business and vendors. The portal streamlines everything from supplier information to document submission to communication and payment tracking.

You can manage contracts, purchase orders, vendor invoices for AP and payments, and tax forms like T4As—all while maintaining compliance with Canadian tax requirements and handling both CAD and USD transactions.

A supplier portal efficiently handles shared business processes through a web interface, having indispensable features that include: 

• 24×7 access to view real-time data
• Ability to update supplier information
• View history of transactions

Supplier portal basics

To understand a supplier portal, you need to know how it handles your business processes across Canada’s diverse marketplace. Your supplier portal software should manage everything from basic procurement to complex cross-border transactions that help with supplier management.

The supplier portal functions include:

• Vendor onboarding with Canadian tax compliance
  
• Electronic invoice submission with GST/HST handling
  
• Invoice and payment tracking in CAD and USD, including payment history and details
  
• Payment dispute management — submission and tracking
  
• Procurement, after sourcing and solicitations
  
• Supply chain management
  
• Dynamic discounting

Vendor onboarding

When your company starts working with a new supplier, the supplier portal streamlines the vendor onboarding process. Provide your vendors with clear instructions, webinars, and FAQs in both English and French for using the AP vendor portal.

Self-service supplier onboarding begins with submitting contact and terms information, payment details, and necessary Canadian tax forms like T4As and Business Numbers. For cross-border suppliers, the system handles both domestic and international tax requirements.

Electronic invoice submission

Vendors in your supply chain can submit invoices through the portal, email, or OCR (optical character recognition) scanning, with automatic GST/HST calculation and validation. 

OCR scanning includes data capture for header and line-item invoice information. Suppliers get paid faster through early payment discounts by offering customers dynamic discounting, and the digital system makes sure nothing gets lost in transit—especially invoices that delay the receipt of payments.

On the other side of the procurement transaction, businesses providing the AP vendor portal can increase their payables and payments workflow efficiency. If customers use payables automation software that includes a self-service supplier portal, accounts payable and payments workflow processes are reduced by up to 80 percent. 

Payment and procurement functions

Your procurement team and existing suppliers can manage everything through the portal – from purchase orders to change requests and delivery tracking. The system handles both domestic and cross-border transactions, with automated notifications in your preferred language. Self-service features let vendors create invoices directly from purchase orders (PO flip), while automatically calculating GST/HST and handling multi-currency transactions.

Invoice and payment inquiry forms

Supplier portals automate manual invoice status inquiry and payment detail inquiry forms. (Sample manual inquiry forms from ABB and its Baldor company are linked.)

The system handles both domestic and cross-border transactions by automating the invoice payment follow-up process with automated notifications in your preferred language. This will save substantial time for vendors and businesses.

Vendors can access status in real-time through the supplier portal to reach accounts receivable collection goals and have better cash flow management. They can also create invoices directly from purchase orders (PO flip) while automatically calculating GST/HST and handling multi-currency transactions.

Procurement functions

Using a supplier portal for your business and its supply chain, the customer procurement team and supplier team can submit or view the purchase order, request change orders, see shipping and delivery status, and get automated vendor notifications.

Self-service solutions like Oracle iSupplier Portal or Oracle Supplier Portal Cloud let vendors accomplish invoicing by using detailed purchase order information. Creating an invoice from a purchase order is known as a PO flip. 

Dynamic discounting

Dynamic discounting is the use of early payment discounts negotiated by the buyer with the vendor depending on changing market conditions. Dynamic discounting reduces the amount due on an invoice when a customer pays by a specified number or range of days after the invoice date.  

Supplier portals handle complex dynamic discounting terms better than some standalone ERP systems. 

Benefits of a supplier portal

Managing supplier relationships in today’s Canadian business environment brings unique challenges—from GST/HST compliance to cross-border transactions.

A supplier portal transforms how your business handles these complexities while delivering significant benefits for both your team and vendors. Let’s explore the benefits of a supplier portal in more detail

Better for your team and environment

Using a supplier portal with accounts payable automation software can eliminate paper for better environmental sustainability, dramatically reduce data entry errors, and provide additional services that reduce the dependencies and resource drain on accounts payable staff.

Your AP team spends less time on manual tasks and more time on strategic work—especially important as many Canadian finance leaders report manual processes as their biggest obstacle.

Let the system do the work

Using a supplier portal streamlines and transfers part of the workflow to vendors, increases information accuracy, organizes submitted documents, automates processes, handles payment disputes, and improves two-way communication, including providing up-to-date status. The interruptions from constant status inquiries outside the portal can stop.

Reduces customer service burden

Accounts payable specialists often complain about spending much of their time operating as a ‘help desk.’ Without a supplier portal and a proactive supplier payment communication system, suppliers or vendors are often left with no choice but to contact the AP department for payment-related inquiries.

Rather than spending their time meaningfully impacting the business, accounts payable staff members feel like customer service representatives—dealing with the minutia of supplier payments.

Improved access, accuracy, and security

The right supplier review portal will automatically flag fraudulent vendors to prevent unnecessary payments while meeting Canadian privacy regulations.

Online supplier portals also provide secure access to data and sensitive information. The vendor login portal can be used from anywhere, at any time you have Internet access.

Real-time status updates

A self-service supplier portal shifts some workflow to vendors, increases accuracy, reduces lost paperwork, resolves problems, and automatically shows the current status and supplier payment history to both parties in real-time in both CAD and USD.

The result is virtually no time-wasting phone tag or interruptions. 

Efficiency and cost savings

When a self-service vendor portal is integrated with an ERP system and a SaaS AP automation software add-on, manual business processes are reduced. The result is much greater efficiency and significant cost reduction when it comes to managing suppliers and cross-border payments that keep you compliant with Canadian regulations.

Central management

A supplier portal that also functions as a supplier payment system can centralize supplier management across provinces and borders, making reconciliation and reporting a much easier task. 

How to achieve supplier portal success

While supplier portals offer excellent features, many Canadian businesses still face challenges when transitioning from traditional invoice processes like sending invoices and requesting payments.

Here’s how to make your supplier portal implementation successful when it comes to supplier information management and supplier payments

Onboard suppliers by articulating benefits

Transitioning suppliers from traditional invoice-to-pay engagements to web supplier portal interaction requires something many accounts payable staff may not be accustomed to: proactive communications.

AP has traditionally been a more reactive entity due to the nature of how it interfaces with everyone. When an invoice comes in, teams must handle provincial tax requirements and proper coding by keying that data into accounting systems or ERP. On due dates, they send out payments. If there’s a payment issue, the supplier contacts AP for clarification, investigation, or correction. Unlike a supplier portal, It’s all reactive.

With a self-service supplier portal, many of the interactions between the supplier and AP are more formulaic. The process of submitting invoices and inquiring about status is more transparent for the supplier and can be done at their convenience. At the same time, because the supplier is responsible for providing additional information about their payment and contact details, much of the data entry onus is on them, thus incentivizing them to provide the right information to get paid.

A brief, well-crafted email with some basic instructions is usually enough to get compliance from suppliers to begin using the portal. Ideally, over 90% of suppliers can interact this way, which relieves a significant burden from having to provide manual assistance with data entry and responses to payment inquiries.

Offer localized language options

To expect an AP department to work in various languages is not realistic. Yet more Canadian companies are working with global and region-specific providers, which presents interesting challenges.

Global and region-specific suppliers are perfect candidates for supplier portals. Quebec-based suppliers require French language access, whereas Indigenous language support may be needed for certain regions. The portal should accommodate these requirements while supporting other international languages for global suppliers.

Enable supplier choice

We’ve seen dramatic adoption of self-service portals by enabling suppliers to choose their payment method—from EFT for domestic transactions to wire transfers for international payments.

Particularly with global providers, not all payment methods suit every person or situation. If the payment amount is low, you don’t want to send funds through an expensive mechanism like a wire transfer. If the person lives in Ukraine, do you automatically know what the best method is?

Giving the supplier a choice means they can find or be guided to the most optimal payment method for them. It also means they can securely provide the necessary bank details to ensure accurate payment. Emailing routing and account numbers or accepting them by phone is insecure and can still result in payment errors.

Provide supplier payment workflow status

“Did you get my invoice?” “Where’s our payment?” These are the questions suppliers most often pose to their customers’ finance departments. At the same time, those questions are interrupters to efficiency. The AP team member then must look up the vendor, find the invoice, query approvers, review the details, and communicate back to the supplier. If there’s an actual problem (e.g., failed payment), someone will need to solve that. Worst, the supplier might go right to the requester for status. Now, you’ve taken up time from two people in the organization for a simple payment inquiry.

Any supplier portal needs to provide status regarding payment approvals and remittance, including GST/HST calculations with cross-border payment tracking. It should also proactively email the user ID regarding supplier status or notify them of issues related to their payment. That feature alone is enough for a supplier to want to engage with the portal, assuming the information is accurate, clear, and accessible.

Rethink payment runs

Many companies rely heavily on scheduled payment runs to suppliers. It makes sense since the process of payments is arduous. Walking through approvals, checking against fraud, signing into banks for ETF, ACH or wire transfers, printing and sending cheques and funding accounts—all take up valuable time, and most of these processes have been manual. And when it’s time to reconcile payments for financial close, that takes up even more business cycles.

But if you’re going through the process of offering suppliers visibility into payments, making payment runs once or twice a month hinders the value of the portal to the supplier. Instead, consider making payments every week (or every day) by utilizing supplier payment automation that integrates with Canadian banking systems and then posting that data as it happens for the supplier to view.

Find a supplier portal that keeps you compliant and connected

When selecting a supplier portal, make sure it meets Canadian tax compliance requirements, supports data residency requirements under PIPEDA, and integrates with your existing systems. The right solution should handle both domestic and international transactions that help you maintain provincial compliance requirements. 

Use consultants to select and implement a standalone supplier portal 

If you’re evaluating and selecting a standalone supplier portal that’s not integrated into standard SaaS software, consider budgeting for and hiring a consultant with vendor portal expertise. The right consultant will lead you through and optimize the process using their experience and ensuring that you make the right customized decision. OR make a better choice…

Choose a proven supplier portal included in a SaaS software solution

When you choose a supplier portal already integrated into another proven software solution, like an AP automation solution, you’ll save money and time. And you’ll increase the likelihood of it working well from the beginning to optimize your business efficiency and effectiveness, saving labour costs.

Picking the best supplier portal for your business 

When selecting a supplier portal for your Canadian business, consider the functionality that matches your business size and type, needs, and budget. From handling GST/HST requirements to managing cross-border transactions, the right supplier portal should also increase efficiency and reduce operating costs. 

Look for scalability that will let you keep the supplier portal functioning as your business grows across provincial and international markets. 

Create a checklist of what’s important in a supplier portal at a cost that your company can afford. 

When evaluating and choosing supplier portal software, know the difference between capabilities and features on an itemized wish list and essentials for a must-have list. Check reviews and ratings for software offering supplier portals. 

Planning the selection of AP vendor portal software can help you find the best supplier portal for your business. Download our white paper, “How to Streamline Supplier Onboarding.”