When one thinks about hospitality innovation, it’s easy to picture smart rooms, contactless check‑in or artificial intelligence (AI)‑powered concierges.
What often goes unnoticed is the labyrinth beneath the surface: invoice‑processing teams drowning in stacks of purchase orders, bills and receipts, resulting in an operational quagmire that hospitality chains, resorts and boutique hotels grapple with daily.
Data from the PYMNTS Intelligence June 2025 Invoice-to-Pay Automation Tracker® Series report, “New Itinerary: How Invoice-to-Pay Platforms Are Transforming Hospitality,” found that, for an industry built atop customer service, the hospitality sector has a surprising user experience problem when it comes to payments.
Vendors from linen suppliers to local caterers submit hundreds of invoices monthly. Between peak season spikes and fluctuating vendor demands, finance teams can often face overwhelming peaks in workload.
The report found that manual invoice processing remains a drag on hospitality firms, with error rates around 2%. These processes can carry significant hidden costs: error correction, duplicate payments, labor for data entry and seasonal hiring to keep up.
A 2% error rate may seem trivial — until you multiply it by hundreds of invoices. Add to that the risk of invoice fraud, and you’re looking at a liability that can quietly undermine guest experience from the bottom up.
Against that backdrop, hospitality players are choosing to reimagine their accounts payable (AP) program as a strategic asset. The impact extends beyond cost-cutting; it’s about resilience and digitization in a globally competitive sector.
Reimagining SMB Hospitality Finance as a Strategic Asset
If the pre‑2025 AP landscape felt archaic, 2025 began signaling dramatic change. Data quoted in the PYMNTS Intelligence report found that 66% of finance professionals expect fully automated AP by now, a number that’s up sharply from just 9% in 2022.
What’s driving the pivot? Fully integrated invoice‑to‑pay platforms that streamline everything, such as invoice intake, approval, vendor payout and even reconciliation. These are end‑to‑end suites that plug into hospitality’s existing enterprise resource management (ERPs) and property‑management systems.
These platforms go beyond digitization; they embed intelligence. For example, if a vendor sends a duplicate invoice, the system flags it before approval. If a supplier offers a 2% discount for payment within 10 days, the system can schedule accordingly. Finance teams get real-time visibility into pending liabilities, upcoming payables and liquidity positions.
According to the report, the benefits are already showing: early adopters have slashed invoice processing times by up to 70% and are earning over $30,000 annually in cash-back rebates, simply by paying SKU-level and vendor invoices through reward-optimized payment methods.
The Shift to Strategic AP Efficiency
What makes hospitality AP particularly challenging — and ripe for disruption — is its operational complexity.
Each property may deal with hundreds of vendors, from global brands to hyperlocal suppliers. Invoice volumes fluctuate seasonally. Some invoices are for perishable goods (e.g., seafood), others for fixed services (e.g., pest control). Matching these invoices against purchase orders or delivery confirmations often happens manually, if at all.
But by integrating financial services directly into the workflow, invoice-to-pay platforms are evolving from mere tools into financial infrastructure. Take virtual cards: many platforms now issue single-use or category-specific virtual cards to pay vendors. These cards not only streamline payment and reconciliation but also generate cash-back rebates or extend payment terms — turning AP into a potential revenue stream.
Read the report: New Itinerary: How Invoice-to-Pay Platforms Are Transforming Hospitality
Others offer dynamic discounting or supply chain financing: vendors can opt to get paid early in exchange for a small discount, funded either by the buyer or a third-party financier embedded into the platform. This allows hospitality businesses to support their suppliers while optimizing their own working capital.
Historically, these kinds of tools were the domain of Fortune 500 giants. Today, cloud infrastructure, SaaS pricing and open application programming interfaces have democratized access. SMB hospitality firms can onboard modern invoice-to-pay solutions with minimal upfront investment — often within days, not months.
The reimagination of hospitality finance is not just about speed or savings — it’s about changing the role of finance in the organization. When accounts payable is automated, predictable and insight-rich, it ceases to be a reactive, back-office function. It becomes a lever for negotiation, a tool for planning and a driver of innovation.
