I once read a great quote that said “your backups are only as good as the last time you tested them”. With that in mind I think you can also apply that to any backup solution, including a disaster recovery plan! As part of our on-going maintenance and testing we’ll be putting our backup servers through their paces on Thursday 17th May at 200:00 GMT to make sure everything works smoothly.
If you have any questions feel free to contact the support team or myself for further details.
A big thank you to all users who completed the PurchaseControl.com support survey, as always it helps us to provide the best service possible and gives us a chance to work on any issues you tell us about.
The winner of the Kindle was Lizzie Pratt from Chapel Down Wines.
Chapel Down Wines are a multi-award winning winery based in Kent in the south of England. From their state of the art winery at Tenterden they produce quality sparkling and still wines from handpicked grapes. The wines produced there can be found in bars, restaurants and wine stores in Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, throughout the UK and also at their own online store.
If you’ve been a long term customer you might have noticed that the old URL used to access the system is now redirecting to a new one. As part of our upgrade program we’ve not just been adding new features to PurchaseControl.com but also to the infrastructure it runs on as well; the new server farm is part of that! With 7.5 of PurchaseControl.com there are a number of new features that required updated components, so we made the decision to upgrade everything at the same time. Hardware, Frameworks, even the network cables have been changed as part of our expansion and as such we’d like to thank all our clients who worked with us on the test systems.
So what’s new in 7.5?
E mailing of documents. Before you had the option to store them, now you can send them on with the Purchase Order. By default any uploaded documents won’t be sent, but simply tick the box to allow them and off they go to the supplier. Very handy if you’ve complicated instructions to send or signed contracts that need to be part of the supporting paperwork.
Goods Received Not Invoiced report. Possibly the most requested report ever, and it’s now available. From a single click you can see all orders that have been completed but are without a corresponding invoice.
View POs from the search screen. If you’ve ever searched through 10 very similar POs this will help save time – you can click the print icon and display the PO in a new window before opening it to see if it’s the right one.
Better compatibility with mobile devices. Many of the pop up windows used to select data have gone and have been replaced with much smoother selectors. Hopefully this will end the JavaScript issues that plagued every minor release of Firefox!
As always the new version is a free upgrade – these are never charged for – and we’ll be contacting everyone about the release data later this week. All the changes are enhancements and as such won’t change any data currently in the system.
If your attending the Southern Energy and Facilities Management expo today, don’t forget I’ll be running a seminar how all purchase order software pays for its self. The 20 minute talk will cover the 3 main areas that a loss can occur in: direct purchasing control, incorrectly receiving goods and catching mistakes during invoice reconciliation. Although we’ll be covering concepts that are used across all purchase management systems, I’m hoping it gives everyone attending a chance to re evaluate their own systems, even if they’re still paper based.
The seminar starts at 1630, you can get more information here
http://www.corkenergyexpo.ie/seminars
TheRegister.co.uk is doing a webinar on whether or not SaaS can make you more efficient and free up resources within your IT department.
Its taking place on 28th September 2011 at 1400 BST, if you’re in the process of looking into SaaS Solutions or want to get the most from your current SaaS suppliers it’s well worth registering for this.
You can register here
EFM Expo in Cork this September
This year we’ll be taking part of the Energy and Facilities Management expo in the Silver Springs convention centre in Cork on the 27th and 28th of September. We’ll be on stand A10, just next to the main entrance. If you’re interested in how PO software can help save money this would be a great time to have an informal chat with one of us about costs, implementation times and expected return on investment.
So what’s EFM expo all about? Taken from the web site:
“EFM Expo (The Southern Energy and Facilities Management Exhibition) is designed to put decision makers from the industrial, commercial and public sectors, located in the southern half of Ireland, as well as those responsible for reducing energy costs in all sectors of the build environment in direct contact with suppliers of a range of products, services and solutions that can benefit them through the delivery of reduced energy costs, improved facilities and a reduction in waste management”
As part of the Expo I’ll be delivering a seminar on 3 ways to save money with Purchase Order Software on the afternoon of Wednesday 27th. In the seminar we’ll be looking at how any PO system should help to save money on purchasing, and what the 3 main areas to concentrate on are. Make sure you book a seat in advance!
http://www.corkenergyexpo.ie/seminars/
I recently answered a question on the CIMA web forum about reasons for using any kind of PO system, and thought it a good idea to
include them here:
1. Reduce costs: once a system is put in to control expenditure you will see a decrease in spending, when used across a large company this can have a very positive impact. This could be between 2/5% depending on the company and the industry. Any organisation with high staff turnover can save more in some cases.
2. Visibility and control: A significant amount of time wasted by the finance team can be put down to chasing “ghost” invoices that arrive when no one knows about the goods or services they relate to. PO systems stop this happening and can also speed up the process of sign off by keeping all the data in a single place.
3. Better auditing: As part of ISO9000 it’s usually recommended to have a PO system in place to aid compliance. It can also speed up an external financial audit which results in lower fee’s.
These would be very common reasons for implementation, although each company we’ve worked with has many smaller specific reasons as well.
Thanks to everyone who completed the 2011 PurchaseControl.com User Survey. As always the survey gives us a chance to find out what additional features you’d like to see in the application, but also gives you a chance to tell us things we might not know (such as the satellite DSL in the gulf of Mexico can be slow at times, tax rates can be up to 4 decimal places and a Spanish translation would be helpful)!
It looks like the promise of a free Amazon Kindle did the trick as we had hundreds of detailed responses; it’s taken us some time to go through them all but we’ve managed to generate a short list of common requests.
As always we need to evaluate how each additional feature will interact with the system (and sometimes we need to postpone certain features as part of this) but so far the most requested features are as follows:
This is an interesting one, in larger organisations the PO can be reviewed by up to 5 people before its authorised. As such it would be helpful if these users could make comments to note their approval without needing the actual permissions to authorise it.
This has been requested a number of time and as such we’re more than likely going to include it in version 8. However, it will be optional so that companies who are more service related won’t be forced to use this workflow.
A very popular request indeed. For companies that have POs in the range of a million pounds plus it’s essential that the supporting documentation for the purchase is attached in a single place. From now on when a document is stored you’ll have the ability to mark it for internal use only, or for inclusion with the E mailed purchase order.
This should save a huge amount of time for any user who’s on the system all day checking deliveries and purchases.
A small change, but a very handy one!
Again, for many larger organisations under regulation this will be a huge time saver. The ability to export all the relevant details with a single mouse click will help to speed up internal audits, end of month reconciliations etc.
This may add complexity to the initial set up process, but gives even greater options for budgeting.
Again for larger clients outside in certain industries, tax rates can be up to 4 decimal places for certain regions and items! We’ll have to admit our ignorance of that as we’ve never seen it, but again, something that will help the larger organisations.
Any who was the lucky winner of the Kindle in the end? We’ll let you know as soon as it’s been shipped… Watch this space!
“It would also help if you explained in details how the system works out approvals, e.g: individual limit, dep limit, PO rules limit, number of approvers…”
It’s worthwhile understanding that the system has been developed by looking at the real life purchasing scenarios that happen in most organisations. From our own experience over the past 7 years we found that the more complicated the process, the more it gets circumvented in practice as so the software has to be as simple as it can be.
With that in mind the system has been developed with certain assumptions to help this process:
1. Most people know who to talk to about authorising a purchase for a department – as such they can select from a list very accurately. If its incorrectly forwarded to a user, that user can always forward it to the correct person.
2. Less than 5-10% of all purchasing is questionable: although user / department limits are important, it’s more important to make sure the right person analyses and approves the purchase after looking at it properly.
3. No one wants to get fired for authorising a high value purchase. If there’s any questions they’ll make sure to have them answered before clicking the “Create PO” button
4. No one has ever put together a high value purchase order without it being discussed several times a board / C level. As such you may not need as many approval levels as you think.
5. High level managers and board members quite often give their user credentials to their PA’s with the instruction to click the “authorise” button if they’re not around. Its best to keep the majority of authorisation requests slightly bellow this level for the most part.
The system doesn’t allow for user specified complex work flows to be created; you can not specify user A reports to user B who then reports to user C as this would need to be hard coded within the application. As our system works on dynamically selecting the correct approver depending on the user limits and security that’s been set up, to hard code this would break the logic. Having said that it does allow for a very robust and quick approval process by using multiple approvals, user limits and departments. This may make the set up and roll out slightly more complicated at the start but it also allows exceptions to be handled very quickly and simple which is the downfall of hard coding these values: authorising users being absent, additional users being added at any level within the system, users being removed Etc.
Approval works in the following way:
1. Firstly the user must have the ability to raise a PO for the department in question.
2. They will also need the ability to approve on behalf of that department. If that’s not been granted then they will have to get someone else to authorise the PO
3. The purchase must be less than their “per transaction” value
4. The purchase must be less that their monthly budget, and less than the total of all the PO’s they’ve raised or authorised that calendar month.
5. Finally, the purchase order value must be below the department’s budget and not push it over – even when added to all the other purchases for that month.
6. OPTIONAL – if there are multiple approvals needed then it has to go through steps 1-4 for each approver needed
Note – the system does not differentiate between users ordering for different departments. If a user can authorise £2K they can do this for ALL departments they authorise for – it cannot be set on a per department basis.
“It would also help if you explained in details how the system works out approvals, e.g: individual limit, dep limit, PO rules limit, number of approvers…”
It’s worthwhile understanding that the system has been developed by looking at the real life purchasing scenarios that happen in most organisations. From our own experience over the past 7 years we found that the more complicated the process, the more it gets circumvented in practice as so the software has to be as simple as it can be.
With that in mind the system has been developed with certain assumptions to help this process:
1. Most people know who to talk to about authorising a purchase for a department – as such they can select from a list very accurately. If its incorrectly forwarded to a user, that user can always forward it to the correct person.
2. Less than 5-10% of all purchasing is questionable: although user / department limits are important, it’s more important to make sure the right person analyses and approves the purchase after looking at it properly.
3. No one wants to get fired for authorising a high value purchase. If there’s any questions they’ll make sure to have them answered before clicking the “Create PO” button
4. No one has ever put together a high value purchase order without it being discussed several times a board / C level. As such you may not need as many approval levels as you think.
5. High level managers and board members quite often give their user credentials to their PA’s with the instruction to click the “authorise” button if they’re not around. Its best to keep the majority of authorisation requests slightly bellow this level for the most part.
The system doesn’t allow for user specified complex work flows to be created; you can not specify user A reports to user B who then reports to user C as this would need to be hard coded within the application. As our system works on dynamically selecting the correct approver depending on the user limits and security that’s been set up, to hard code this would break the logic. Having said that it does allow for a very robust and quick approval process by using multiple approvals, user limits and departments. This may make the set up and roll out slightly more complicated at the start but it also allows exceptions to be handled very quickly and simple which is the downfall of hard coding these values: authorising users being absent, additional users being added at any level within the system, users being removed Etc.
Approval works in the following way:
1. Firstly the user must have the ability to raise a PO for the department in question.
2. They will also need the ability to approve on behalf of that department. If that’s not been granted then they will have to get someone else to authorise the PO
3. The purchase must be less than their “per transaction” value
4. The purchase must be less that their monthly budget, and less than the total of all the PO’s they’ve raised or authorised that calendar month.
5. Finally, the purchase order value must be below the department’s budget and not push it over – even when added to all the other purchases for that month.
6. OPTIONAL – if there are multiple approvals needed then it has to go through steps 1-4 for each approver needed
Note – the system does not differentiate between users ordering for different departments. If a user can authorise £2K they can do this for ALL departments they authorise for – it cannot be set on a per department basis.
