Integrating your purchasing, receiving, and accounting functions is a great way to increase efficiency within your organization, and to provide better controls and safeguards throughout the procure-to-pay/purchase-to-pay/source-to-pay lifecycle.
Our P2P system links the procurement process to the finance department and specifically touches each of the following areas:
Procure-to-pay (P2P) provides a quick and easy way to onboard suppliers and manage their profiles without bypassing compliance with your business policies. The information asymmetry between Sourcing, Purchasing, and Accounting (as well as any other departments) is greatly reduced with help of real-time information and auto-notification. A role-based permission-driven architecture ensures authorized users of the system get access to all the updates in real time and minimizes long delays in getting suppliers approved.
Using P2P, it is very easy to assign and manage multiple suppliers for a product while maintaining dedicated supplier catalogs. Utilizing an automated procure-to-pay process flow, P2P increases efficiency in ordering raw materials, finished goods, consumables, supplies, and service goods from one or multiple sources. Advanced search capabilities provide a preview of all available sourcing options. Buyers can compare and evaluate multiple sourcing options based on variables such as product attributes, price, minimum order qty, lead time, etc. An intuitive and simple user experience ensures that applicable pricing, terms, and agreements are automatically applied. Also, the quote-to-order conversion workflow is fully automated from quote approval to PO approval avoiding unwanted manual intervention.
Receiving inventory has traditionally been performed with a lot of manual intervention at multiple touchpoints. Until the purchase shipment from a supplier reaches its final destination, it involves many steps from unloading, to reconciliation, to inspection, to put away. The Procurement Execution System not only aids all these steps, but also minimizes human errors through automation. An inspection workflow ensures that parts are tested against pre-defined quality parameters. Post-inspection, put away locations are auto-suggested and documentation requirements are enforced. Once received, identifiers such as serial numbers, lot Ids, barcodes, etc. can be assigned and printed for better tracking throughout its life cycle. From an accounting perspective, P2P takes care of auto-computing and syncing received inventory cost information in real time.
A P2P system streamlines invoicing and vendor payment processing by integrating with whatever system handles vendor payments and exceptions. It generates purchase invoices in real-time, with line-level details for applicable discounts, credit terms, etc. after accepting the shipment against the PO. The integrated P2P can quickly present invoices for reconciliation to the AP department in order to take advantage of early payment discounts. Payment details can in turn be pushed back to the P2P, to be applied to the respective unpaid invoice(s) and complete the source-to-settle cycle.
With reporting capabilities and role-based permission driven dashboard features, P2P provides critical information to end users working in different roles/departments. Targeted notifications, tasks, and alarms aid in performing routine tasks more efficiently and in much less time.
To learn more about HotWax’s procure-to-pay solution and how it could benefit your organization, please contact us to speak to one of our P2P experts.