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.