'Approved Payable Finance' (APF) is a Buyer-centric business which comprises of the discounting of supplier’s invoices by the buyer’s bank. The advance funding (early payments) granted to the supplier by the Financier is based on the buyer’s upfront approval to the financing bank to pay these invoices on the due date. This helps the buyer's business to optimize their working capital by extending payment terms while ensuring that suppliers receive early payments

Approved Payable Finance (APF) is a combined program of the buyer and his bank proposed to the buyer’s suppliers. 

APF is known by different names depending on the financial institution, region, or industry like 'Confirmed Receivables Purchase', 'Reverse Factoring', 'Trade Payables Financing', 'Payables Finance'

APF is a mass business which works best with full electronic interaction between all participants and high automation or Straight Through Processing (STP) at the bank’s back office.

Approved Payable Finance process in DOKA  

• The first step is to upload a pool of documents containing the data of invoices (XML/Json structure both supported), which can be approved by the buyer. The data is imported either automatically or registered manually on screen. From this pool we can automatically generate APF offerings to the Supplier ("would you like these funded?") or direct APF advance funding's to the supplier for approved invoices.
  The behaviour is configurable on a Buyer Program basis , and can be fine tuned on a pairing (buyer/Supplier) basis.
• When an APF funding is executed, the advanced amount is credited to the supplier and the credit line of the buyer is used. On maturity date of the financed invoices the buyer is debited and the liability amount is released from his credit line. Advance offerings and direct advances are accessible as contracts.
• The application workflow engine handles the automated execution without user interaction, e.g. creation of advance offers, repayment of advance upon due date, etc.  Special cases like partial repayment of the APF, extension of the APF through exception handling or free messages are also supported in the application. 
• When an agreed interface format, e.g. APIs via a bank's web front-end application, will be used, application can automatically generate messages to synchronize the database kept within the web front-end accessible for the buyer and supplier.

System supports standardized communication channels to send direct messages to the buyer, the supplier and for interbank processing to banks:

• Settlement information and free format messages can be sent through existing standardized channels, e.g. via the SWIFT-Network.
• Payments can be sent through several clearing channels as interbank payment messages.
• Status information to buyer and supplier are handled via APIs.  

APF Document / Invoice Flow

The invoices that are stored in the Maintaining Finance Base Documents pool and grouped by Periodic Grouping of FBDs to create an offer or aggregate a funding payment.

Document Pool

APF activities (i.e. Offer/Advance) includes batch of documents (mainly invoices). To facilitate these APF activities and store the documents (invoices), a document pool (see Maintaining Finance Base Documents) is maintained. Documents can be stored/added in this pool using below three options.

1.  Automatically - Import electronic file (.xml/json) through Manager for Incoming Messages.
2.  Manually - Manually update document details in Maintaining Finance Base Documents.
3.  Manually - Manually when creating APF Offer or APF Funding contracts.

1) Automatically updated