It’s a good question. The short answer is it depends on what department you’re working for!
For a line manager the single most important thing is to keep within budget. There’s nothing like having to explain to the finance team why once again they’ve got to find a little bit more cash to cover an over budget department. Especially when it’s something that can be controlled quite easily. The worst thing is its usually a team members who’s got them in the position and yet they’re going to have to carry this one themselves.
For the team working in warehousing, goods inwards is a critical function that they manage. The process of buying something is as important as the process of making sure the received order is exactly what was purchased.
For the finance team it’s going to be Supplier Invoice Reconciliation. Once they’re confident that only approved purchases orders are being created it means they don’t have to keep double checking with the requisitioners and their managers to see if the purchase was authorised. This means quicker turn around on paperwork and a much reduced chance of an invoice being paid for goods or services that were not received.
For the management team it’s going to be piece of mind. Expenditure is being controlled meaning less chances of hidden expenditure turning up when it’s not expected – and that’s usually when there’s a cash flow crisis.
Purchase management software tackles each aspect of the problem by controlling 3 things in order:
1. Buying something
2. Goods Inwards Reconciliation
3. Supplier Invoice Reconciliation
If you can put in place the control of these three things, you can be confident that the chances of wasteful expenditure occurring have been reduced considerably.
The great thing about Software As A Service is that we can add new features at no extra cost to our end users. It’s all covered by the monthly costs along with other services like support and training. Imagine going to the garage after you’ve bought a new car and them upgrading your alloys wheels for free… if only 
Once again we’ve taken on board your functionality requests and made a short list. Tell us what you think is the most important and you could win one of four £25 Amazon.co.uk vouchers for your trouble. The survey closes in 10 days time so get your responses in quickly!
Click here to take the survey
We’ve announced a new 3 year price lock for all POcontrol.com enterprise subscriptions!
Rolling out any system with more than 100 users isn’t something you want to do on a regular basis, in fact as a former IT manager it’s the kind of thing I used to avoid where ever possible. The re-training costs on a new system alone can be more than a third of the cost of the purchase, so when you buy a new IT system it needs to be in place for at least 3 years to make the most from your investment. Many of our customers have bought POcontrol.com with this in mind so as a thank you for your long term business we’re locking down the prices for the duration of the contracts.
This price scheme is available for all current enterprise customers, talk to your account manager today for more details. From a purchasing point of view I’m sure you’ll also be able to negotiate a discount on the extended contract!
December 15, 2009 – 3:27 pm
We’ve had some users following the Sage Integration progress with interest as its going to be one of the major time saving requests we’ve introduced. We’ve now got another one that’s just as good…
The next major release will give you the ability to upload documents and attach them to either invoices or purchase orders! With this optional extra you’ll be able to attach up to 5 files per purchase order or invoice and have 1 gigs worth of storage per year.
This is going to be a major help for any finance department looking to find out more about how remote locations are managing the purchasing process. By attaching pro-forma invoices or quotes to requisitions before authorisation takes place, you can effectively use the system for tendering management. Even better when the end of year audit comes around all the documents relating to the purchasing are located in one place. That’s going to save on auditors fee’s…
If you’re interested in this call us for more information. The cost is only £99 per year for this feature.
November 17, 2009 – 5:18 pm
One of the most common questions over the past 6 months has been “when can we import invoices from POcontrol.com to sage”? Well the answer is Now! Kind of
We’ve partnered with WebXel to provide sage compatibility and are currently looking for beta testers to help decide on what data you want to pull from POcontrol.com. All you need is a POcontrol.com subscription and an up to date copy of sage line 50 (version 10 or above).
If you’re interested drop me an E mail to support@pocontrol.com, or call us for more details.
More details on WebXel can be found here: http://www.sageorderimporter.co.uk/
October 14, 2009 – 3:41 pm
Find out what POcontrol.com CTO Neill Austin has to say about start-ups, reaching into the American market and presenting a lunch time radio show on Phantom 105.2 – Dublins Indie Rock.
http://startuplucky.com/2009/10/14/irish-start-up-pocontrol-com-delivering-web-based-purchasing-tools/
Please don’t forget to vote on our video!
September 23, 2009 – 4:52 pm
Currently we’re offering anyone who’s interested in the POcontrol.com a free 30 day demo version of the system. There’s no functionality restriction, no hidden costs and you still have access to technical support throughout your trial of the system.
As people who use software everyday as well as designing it, we understand how much work goes into evaluating a new system before its purchased. With a 30 day trial it makes the evaluation process quicker, as you can get the system configured to your liking straight away.
Call us for your free trial on +44 208 123 77 44.
August 20, 2009 – 2:22 pm
To date this year over 90 million Euros worth of Purchase Orders were put through POcontrol.com, this is considerable increase over 67 million last year. Even if we only helped to save 1% of the total purchasing costs for all our customers, that still amounts to a gross saving of €900 000 in total for all our customers. Enough to cover a smallish company pay role for the year.
Not a bad thought really, especially when we like to think you should save a minimum of 5% in your first year of using the system.
August 12, 2009 – 9:28 am
This month we’ve announced a new licence scheme for small businesses to buy POcontrol.com.
Originally we asked that new clients buy 10 or more POcontrol.com licences to get the best results from their roll out of our Purchase Management System. As the system is designed for the control of multiple people involved with purchasing and goods inwards, without this number of users it’s difficult to report on who’s buying what and who’s responsible for what order. To save money in the past people have used generic logons between many people such as purchaser1@mycompany.com and then found out that it’s impossible to track who really ordered what, leading to a break down in efficiency. For this reason we always held back on selling individual licences because in the long term it doesn’t save a company money or time.
Recently though we noticed a growing number of requests from smaller business who wanted access to what we’d consider the secondary functions of POcontrol.com, and were happy to use a simpler system set up. There may be only one person in the company of ten doing the purchasing and goods inwards, and what they needed was a system to keep track of everything purchased and if the goods had been received. As the only person purchasing they didn’t need the full approval system but still would like to organise their spending in terms of cost centres and department.
This is why we’ve launched the 199 scheme. You get a fully functioning version of POPcontrol.com, you can add users as you need as your organisation grows and you have access to all of the POcontrol.com functions that are critical to small businesses and big businesses alike. Functions such as:
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Professional looking purchase orders
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Spend limits for department
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Ability to assign expenditure to Cost Centres as well as departments.
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Full reporting on everything purchased
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The ability to export data straight into excel
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Goods inwards reconciliation
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Invoice reconciliation
With the more users you have though, the greater the system can help control your purchasing. With a single licence you can’t set up the approval process, limit particular buyers to approved suppliers or control who can see the invoices or receive goods which is why a single licence won’t help a large distributed company with a large workforce. However, If you’re a small company in charge of marine repairs such as our latest client Tyne Slipway & Engineering, just being able to easily keep track of everything bought makes life easier. No more items being purchased and not charged back to the client, or invoices that you can’t find a reference for.
