What Coupa R44 Means for Finance and Procurement Teams

Coupa’s January 2026 Release (R44) isn’t chasing headlines. While the platform continues to move toward its longer-term vision of autonomous spend management, this release focuses on something more immediate: reducing the everyday friction that slows finance and procurement teams down. 

Across invoicing, payments, sourcing, and supplier collaboration, R44 delivers practical improvements to visibility, control, and workflow efficiency. These updates deliver targeted enhancements that address long-standing pain points — many of which customers have been asking for — and make it easier for finance and procurement teams to operate with confidence day to day. 

Real-time visibility where it matters most 

Virtual Card improvements 

Users can now view their complete virtual card number directly in the Coupa mobile app, a welcome change for field teams and travelers who need to make purchases on the go. 

Credit notes enhancements 

Credits from suppliers have a way of getting buried. They're linked to invoices but not always easy to spot, which leads to reconciliation headaches and, in some cases, expense leakage when credits go unapplied. 

R44 brings two changes here. First, new columns surface credits at a glance in the invoice view.  

Second, teams can now require suppliers to include the original invoice number and date on credit notes, creating cleaner audit trails and preventing orphaned credits. 

Value date field for digital payments 

"When will I get paid?" 

It's a simple question, but until now, finance teams often couldn't give suppliers a straight answer after processing a digital payment. R44 adds a "Value Date" field showing the estimated date suppliers will receive funds. A small addition, but one that makes a real difference for treasury planning and supplier relationships. 

Note: This column must be manually added to existing views at this time. 

Customer account number tracking 

R44 allows customer account numbers to flow through the entire invoice and payment lifecycle. The number appears on remittance advice for ACH payments and in the reference field for physical checks. 

The benefit is straightforward: suppliers can apply payments correctly the first time without reaching out to the AP team for clarification. 

Smarter controls to reduce risk and rework 

Preferred supplier highlighting in search 

Employees don't always know which suppliers are preferred. Even when they do, it's easy to forget — or simply opt for the easy route and select supplier at the top of the list. Either way, the result is off-contract purchases and fragmented spend. 

R44 makes preferred suppliers visually obvious by placing them at the top of search results. Users can also filter to show only preferred suppliers. When the right choice is the easiest choice, people make it. 

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Workbench for PO and cXML transmission errors 

Purchase order and cXML transmission failures now have a dedicated home. R44 introduces a unified workbench that centralizes all transmission errors in one view, with tasks auto-assigned to buyers for resolution. 

Previously, these errors were easy to miss. Buyers might not realize there was an issue until a supplier asked why they hadn't received an order. Now, nothing slips through the cracks. 

Note: This feature must be enabled in Company Information before tasks appear. 

InvoiceSmash improvements 

R44 includes several InvoiceSmash enhancements: 

Duplicate detection now happens immediately. The system flags duplicates before AP wastes time processing them, a much-needed change from the previous behavior where duplicates weren't caught until submission. 

Bulk actions allow invoices to be moved or archived in bulk. This is a welcome relief for high-volume AP teams. 

Auto-requester rules let you create custom mappings to automatically populate the requester field based on extracted invoice data. 

Individually, these are incremental improvements. Together, they add up to a noticeably faster invoice workflow. 

Unified banking validation for supplier payment accounts 

Bad banking data causes failed payments. Failed payments cause frustrated suppliers and time-consuming cleanup. 

R44 adds enhanced validation when creating Supplier Payment Accounts, catching errors before payments are attempted rather than after they've failed. 

Automatic bank reconciliation for virtual cards 

For Coupa Card customers, reconciling virtual card charges with bank statements no longer requires manual effort. R44 automates this process, removing one more task from the month-end close checklist. 

Disabling payment methods during CSP onboarding 

Not every organization uses all of Coupa Pay's payment methods. R44 lets you disable the ones you don't use during supplier onboarding, so suppliers are guided toward your preferred remit-to process from the start. No confusion, no cleanup. 

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Greater collaboration and transparency  

Supplier access to contracts in CSP 

Contract collaboration has traditionally lived in email. Suppliers ask for the latest version, internal teams dig through folders, and everyone wonders if they're looking at the right document. 

R44 finally moves this into Coupa. Suppliers can now view and collaborate on contracts directly through the Coupa Supplier Portal, so both parties can work from the same source of truth. 

Note: This feature must be enabled in Company Information. Only contracts with an attached "Legal Agreement" are visible to suppliers, and suppliers must be invited to view contracts unless the status is "Published." 

Extraction feedback on approved and on-hold invoices 

Previously, AP teams could only provide extraction feedback on draft invoices. Move an invoice to Approved or On Hold, and the window for feedback closed. You had to choose between processing speed and helping Coupa improve its extraction accuracy. 

R44 removes that limitation. Feedback can now be provided on Approved and On Hold invoices, so you can do both. 

Visual ordering 

For organizations with complex catalogs, R44 introduces a new way to order. Interactive diagrams let users click directly on product parts to select items, and order lists now appear in search results. 

This is particularly valuable for MRO or manufacturing environments where selecting the wrong component is easy when navigating long lists of part numbers. Making the right selection visually obvious reduces ordering mistakes. 

What R44 signals about Coupa’s 2026 priorities 

R44 reflects Coupa listening to long-standing customer feedback. InvoiceSmash duplicate detection, for example, has been a frequent request for years. 

While Coupa continues investing in AI-driven automation and its broader platform vision, this release shows Coupa remains committed to addressing foundational usability. For organizations still maturing their Coupa instance, these "quality of life" improvements can drive adoption and reduce administrative burden without requiring a major initiative. 

Is your team ready to take advantage of R44? 

If you’re unsure which features are relevant to your environment — or whether your current setup is helping or holding you back — Acquis is here to help. Let’s work together to unlock the value hiding in your Coupa systems. Contact us to get started.

Quick reference: R44 features by Coupa module

For more information on R44, visit Coupa Compass.