🎯 Will It Hit This Fiscal Year? The Four-Step “Payable” Test
It’s the question we hear more than any other this time of year: “How do I make sure this hits the current fiscal year?”
The answer isn’t “send the invoice early” or “submit the req in May.” It’s a four-step chain — and every link has to connect by the deadline on the Year-End Calendar.
The Four-Step Test
For a transaction to land in FY26, all four of the following must be true by noon on the date listed on the year-end calendar:
- ✅ Purchase order created — The PO has to exist in RealSource. A requisition still in workflow, awaiting approval, or hung up on a budget check doesn’t count.
- ✅ Receiver completed — Goods or services must be marked as received in RealSource. No receiver, no payment — and no FY26 expense.
- ✅ Invoice in the system — The supplier’s invoice has to actually be entered into RealSource. If it’s sitting in someone’s inbox, taped to a monitor, or “on its way from the vendor,” it isn’t in the system.
- ✅ Invoice in “Payable” status — This is the one that catches people. An invoice can be entered, matched against the PO, and still sit in Pending, In Review, or Hold because of a match exception, missing receiver, or routing question. Only invoices reading Payable by the noon deadline are processed against FY26.
Why “Payable” Is the Real Finish Line
Think of “Payable” as the invoice’s green light to leave the station. Until it gets there, the train doesn’t move.
If the noon deadline passes and an invoice is still showing anything else — Pending Match, Pending Approval, Hold, Exception — it rolls forward into FY27. Same expense, same vendor, same goods… different fiscal year. And that’s the kind of surprise no department wants when it’s reconciling its budget in July.
This is also why the fourth criterion is the one we see trip up the most departments. You did everything right: PO in place, goods received, invoice loaded. But a $0.04 price variance triggered a match exception three days before the deadline, and nobody cleared it in time. Result? FY27 expense.
How to Stay Ahead of It
A few habits will save you from a late-June scramble:
- 📬 Don’t sit on Match Exception emails. Every one of those notifications is a transaction at risk. Clear them the same week — ideally the same day — they arrive.
- 📦 Receive promptly. The single most common reason invoices get stuck is a missing receiver. If goods or services have been delivered, complete the receiver right away.
- 🤝 Loop your suppliers in early. Ask vendors to invoice as soon as work is complete or goods ship. Don’t wait for them to remember.
- 🔍 Run a status check the week before the deadline. Pull a list of your open POs and check the status of their associated invoices. Anything not reading “Payable” is your action item — not next week’s.
The Calendar Tells You When. This Post Tells You What.
Specific deadlines for each transaction type — POs, payment requests, expense reports, P-Card reconciliations, and more — live on the FY26 Year-End Calendar. Bookmark it. Print it. Tape it next to your monitor.
But remember: the calendar tells you when the door closes. The four-step test tells you what has to be true for your transaction to walk through it.
Questions or something looking shaky on your end? Reach out to your assigned buyer or email [email protected] — the earlier the better.
VCU Procurement Services
Categories Procurement Services