Receiving The Wrong Thing?

Ensure you get the right thing!

Many large organizations around the world do not have a formal process for checking the items they received were in fact the items they wanted. This is a surprising as they go to great lengths to authorize the expense, raise the order and pay the invoice on time but dont check that they actually received what they are paying for. The facts usually do come to light but a long time after the invoice was paid.

To trap this problem before the invoice is paid the organizations needs to follow some form of closed loop purchase audit. There are many ways to do this one way is to have better controls by way of an eProcurement System like the one our company used from Eyvo eProcurement Solutions.

The Eyvo purchasing software system ties the Request to the Order to the actual receipt before the invoice can be duly authorized for payment  a process like this has to be the way to go to tighten on costs and avoid costly errors – All buying managers need to implement such closed loop audits within their own organizations as the savings go to the bottom line.

And in this day and age one also needs to justify ones position if you are not to get cut in the latest round of head-count reductions – implementing a system like this might just show your boss’s you are ahead of the curve in the expense reduction game.

Prof. Arnold Whitely-Sobel is privately contracted by organizations of all sizes to suggest new procurement procedures and analyze and improve workflow throughput ; he is also a director at a public engineering company. See more stories on procurement at e-procurement.com.