Accounts Payable Data Collection
Accounts payable data illustrates actual expenditure of NHS providers and complements the purchase order data collection, which illustrates only what an organisation has ordered. It is sourced from the General Ledger.
Frequency: monthly
Background to the collection
The Accounts Payable Data Collection is part of the Spend Comparison Service.
The data collections are partly automated in partnership with NHS NEP and NHS Shared Business Services (SBS) and complemented with manual submissions through the Strategic Data Collection Service (SDCS).
Please note that the NHS Spend Comparison Service data collections rely on submissions of full datasets across spend categories for the respective time periods, not merely a subset of data for specific categories.
If you are a customer of NHS NEP, please do not make manual submissions. NHS England automatically gets the accounts payable data from NHS NEP for their customers and integrate this on your behalf.
If you are a customer of NHS SBS, please do not make manual submissions. NHS England automatically gets the accounts payable data from NHS SBS for their customers and integrate this on your behalf.
If you are not a customer of the above for invoice processing and using their systems, please manually submit your accounts payable data.
The window for data submission for the Accounts Payable collections falls within the first 2 weeks of each calendar month. Trusts must submit the previous months data during the 2-week window.
Submitted data is processed towards the end of each calendar month and will be made available for analysis via the dashboards no later than the first of the following month.
Submission timeframe
The submission window is open for the first 15 days of the subsequent month. For example, the May 2025 accounts payable data can be submitted 1 June to 15 June.
Guidance
Find guidance on submitting data through the Strategic Data Collections Service.
More detailed information about the SCS data submissions can be found via the Central Commercial Function Hub.
Further information
Learn how to register with the Strategic Data Collection Service, download and add your data to the template, and submit your data.
Last edited: 23 June 2025 9:34 am