How do you automate purchasing?

Why does purchasing take so much of everyone's time?

Because the request is the easy part. Someone in a team needs cleaning materials, a replacement part or a hire item, so they email a manager, who forwards it to finance, who asks which budget it should come from and whether the supplier is one the business uses. By the time the purchase order is raised, several people have spent time on a decision that the rules could have made, and the order may still go to a supplier nobody has checked.

Then the paperwork drifts. Deliveries arrive without anyone recording them against the order, so invoices cannot be matched later. Budget holders find out they are overspent at month end rather than when they approved the spend. If you want to see what this costs in hours, the audit estimates it across your main processes in about three minutes.

What goes wrong in a typical purchase request?

Most problems trace back to checks done from memory. The approver does not know how much of the budget is left. The requester does not know whether the supplier is approved. Finance raises the PO without knowing whether the goods were ever received. Each gap is small, and together they produce maverick spend, late invoices that cannot be matched, and suppliers asked to wait for payment because the paperwork is incomplete.

What does a rebuilt purchasing process include?

It is set up around your budgets, your approval limits and your approved supplier list.

• Requests raised and read. Requests come in through a short form or the inbox your teams already use, and the item, department, supplier and value are read into a structured request.
• Budget checked. Each request is checked against the department budget, and the approver sees the budget remaining before they decide.
• Supplier checked. The supplier is checked against your approved list. A request to an unapproved supplier stops with the reason, before any order exists.
• Approval routed. Requests go to the right approver by value and department, with escalation for anything above a limit.
• PO sent. Once approved, the purchase order is created in your finance system and sent to the supplier.
• Goods receipted. Deliveries are recorded against the order with the delivery note attached, which is what makes later matching in accounts payable work.

Every request, check, approval and receipt is logged, so the history of any purchase can be read in one place.

How does the work change for requesters and budget holders?

Requesters raise a request once and can see where it is, instead of chasing by email. Budget holders approve with the figures in front of them and see overspend before it happens, not after. Finance stops acting as a switchboard between teams and suppliers and spends its time on the exceptions that need judgement. Suppliers receive clear, approved orders and are paid on time because the paperwork behind each invoice is complete.

Which businesses benefit most?

Businesses with many people buying against budgets, or with spend spread across sites and teams. Facilities management providers ordering parts and services for client contracts, property and asset managers buying on behalf of several owners, and multi-site organisations with estates, maintenance and project teams are the clearest examples. It is most useful where purchasing and payables are tackled together, so the order, the receipt and the invoice all agree.

How is the purchasing process rebuilt?

Scoping traces a handful of recent requests from the first email to the paid invoice, alongside your budgets, approval limits and supplier list, and connects to the finance system where orders are raised. The build applies your rules and is tested on real requests. A parallel run follows, with requests handled both ways so budget holders can compare the routing and checks with what they would have done. It goes live only when your finance lead and budget holders sign it off, and support continues under the subscription. Timing is set at scoping.