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Public alignment statement

PPN 018 Supplier Payment Approach

Episodic ICCE recognises PPN 018 - Taking account of a supplier’s approach to payment in the procurement of major contracts as a significant procurement-policy source for prompt payment, supplier cash-flow discipline, supply-chain resilience and evidence-led supplier assessment. The source sets expectations for in-scope major procurements concerning supplier payment systems, disputed-invoice procedures, 30-day payment terms, payment-performance thresholds, action plans, verification, legal-entity discipline, framework or call-off treatment, supply-chain finance boundaries, Fair Payment Code references and procurement decision control.

Those expectations are commercially specific and population-sensitive. PPN 018 is concerned with the bidding legal entity’s commercial supplier-invoice and payment population, normally assessed across defined six-month reporting periods. ICCE therefore maintains a clear boundary: worker wages, payroll funding, gross or net payroll, statutory employer costs, agency payroll-related transfers, worker payment instructions, ICCE Platform Fees and payroll reconciliation are not substitutes for the supplier-invoice population required by PPN 018.

ICCE aligns with PPN 018 as a Collaborative Procurement-Support Provider for ICCE-routed temporary-labour activity and controlled evidence governance. It can preserve worker-payment, labour-economic, dispute, remediation, counterparty, source, legal-entity, period, calculation, release and audit evidence, and could support formal PPN 018 invoice metrics only where a separately governed commercial-payment profile supplies complete and authoritative supplier-invoice and settlement data. ICCE does not determine PPN applicability, make supplier self-declarations, verify payment-practice responses, calculate a current PPN pass, decide deselection, approve exemptions, determine Fair Payment Code status, or convert worker payroll into supplier-payment evidence.

Episodic maintains a continued alignment commitment by reviewing this statement where PPN 018, its guidance, standard procurement questions, thresholds, reporting definitions, action-plan requirements, verification practice, related payment law, Fair Payment Code context, UMS-505 procurement-support outputs or ICCE-routed evidence controls are amended, replaced, superseded or materially clarified.

Alignment table

Expectation Relevant sources ICCE enforced alignment ICCE evidence / output
Scope, threshold, timing and applicability control Domain 1 - scope, threshold, timing and applicability ICCE preserves externally supplied PPN applicability, procurement date, annualised value, contract identifier, framework or dynamic-market reference and reporting period while keeping applicability external Procurement-context record, PPN reference, threshold and timing reference, reporting-period record, limitation statement
Supply-chain intent and labour-chain attribution Domain 2 - intention to use a supply chain ICCE preserves admitted agency, counterparty and labour-chain participant evidence for ICCE-routed activity while keeping the supplier’s PPN supply-chain declaration external Counterparty record, agency attribution, supplier declaration reference, chain-coverage statement, change history
Payment-system evidence and payroll boundary Domain 3 - systems for prompt and effective supply-chain payment ICCE evidences controlled worker-payment, reconciliation and exception processes without presenting those processes as proof of supplier-wide accounts-payable systems Worker-payment evidence, disbursement and reconciliation record, payroll exception record, supplier-payment limitation
Disputed invoices and 30-day flow-down evidence Domains 4 and 5 - disputed-invoice procedures; 30-day terms and contractual flow-down ICCE preserves dispute, escalation, correction and external payment-term references while keeping commercial invoice disputes and contractual flow-down externally governed Dispute chronology, correction record, external contract-term reference, counterparty acknowledgement, flow-down limitation
Invoices paid within contractual terms Domain 6 - invoices paid within agreed contractual terms ICCE preserves externally verified within-terms results, explanations and evidence lineage where supplied; base ICCE payroll data is not used as a proxy External result reference, source population, period record, explanation and action-plan linkage, unsupported-data statement
PPN payment metrics and same-period controls Domains 7, 8 and 9 - invoices paid within 60 days; 45-day average; concurrent reporting-period achievement ICCE’s reporting architecture supports period locking, threshold comparison and reproducibility where complete commercial-invoice data is supplied through a governed profile Two-period evidence structure, metric definition, threshold reference, same-period comparison, calculation and supersession record
Commercial-payment population and definitions Domain 10 - payment-performance reporting population and definitions ICCE preserves that PPN 018 uses the defined supplier-invoice population and blocks substitution of worker wages, payroll funding, platform fees or worker payment events Commercial-population requirement, no-proxy control, incomplete-data statement, source-population manifest
Action plans and payment improvement evidence Domain 11 - action plans for payment improvement ICCE preserves externally authored action plans, owners, approvals, publication references, milestones, progress evidence and exceptions without determining plan sufficiency Action-plan record, director approval reference, publication reference, milestone tracker, remediation and progress evidence
Verification and public payment-practice data Domain 12 - verification, cross-reference and public payment-practice data ICCE preserves external database references, retrieval dates, legal-entity matching, period matching, discrepancies and clarification evidence supporting authority-led verification External payment-practice reference, source and retrieval record, matching evidence, discrepancy log, audit trail
Terms, interest, remedial steps and supplier documents Domain 13 - evidence for standard terms, disputes, interest and public-contract terms ICCE stores supplier-authored payment terms, dispute procedures, late-interest and remedial-step evidence as external records with version and review status Document reference, version and expiry record, late-interest evidence reference, remedial-step evidence, release log
Legal entity, group, JV and new-entrant discipline Domain 14 - bidding legal entity, groups, joint ventures and new entrants ICCE preserves entity-specific evidence and prevents silent substitution of parent, affiliate or group payment data for the bidding legal entity Legal-entity reference, group relationship record, new-entrant qualifier, entity-specific evidence pack, substitution block
Framework, dynamic-market and call-off verification Domain 15 - framework agreements, dynamic markets and call-off re-verification ICCE links supplier-payment evidence state to externally governed framework, dynamic-market or call-off contexts without determining membership, appointment or continued pass status Framework or call-off reference, PPN version, verification-date record, evidence state, re-verification history
Supply-chain finance and intercompany treatment Domain 16 - supply-chain finance and intercompany payments ICCE preserves its separation from lending, factoring, receivables ownership and supply-chain finance while allowing externally supplied finance or intercompany treatment to be recorded where governed No-finance statement, external finance-method reference, intercompany classification, calculation limitation
Fair Payment Code relationship Domain 17 - Fair Payment Code relationship ICCE preserves externally verified Fair Payment Code status, suspension or action-plan references without converting them into a PPN 018 pass, fail or supplier-quality conclusion Fair Payment Code reference, status date, action-plan cross-reference, no-automatic-conversion control
Selection, deselection, false information and exemptions Domain 18 - selection outcome, deselection, false information and exemptions ICCE preserves evidence provenance, missing information, inconsistencies, clarifications, action plans and external decisions without passing, failing, deselecting or approving exemptions Evidence manifest, discrepancy record, clarification chronology, external decision reference, no-pass/fail statement

Sources covered

Principal source set

Payment, evidence, verification and procurement-decision domains covered

Core population boundary covered

Publisher
Augscape Research & Development Limited, trading through the Episodic ICCE documentation surface.

Company number
12996074

Website
episodic.co.uk

Document status
Public alignment statement · 2.1

Publication date
10 July 2026

Use boundary
General information only. Not legal, tax, financial, insurance, employment or investment advice.