Online Purchasing Software Solutions
Helping schools manage all supplier spending.

A properly structured, approved purchase order document, will ensure that your supplier will has clear instructions. From what has been ordered, including quantity and cost, to delivery dates and instructions as to the delivery location (that may be different to where the order originated i.e. after school club), as well as your own organisations terms and conditions. Clearly stating these dynamics minimises the potential for confusion and misinterpretation, and even duplication. You want the right goods delivered, at the agreed price, in the right time frame, and your supplier will want to be paid in a timely fashion! A digital purchase order document sent by email as a PDF to the supplier handles all these areas in a structured format – you can even send supporting documents such as quotations or training schedules as attachments.

Most certainly. Size of school is not the important factor, it’s the requirement to keep a firm control on expenditure that is a key driver for primary, secondary and academy. For many schools a large proportion of expenditure will be spent on purchases of a wide range of materials and services .Having controls such as budgeting by department, will ensure overspending will never be an issue and using workflow approvals for proposed orders will mean full auditability and visibility. A purchase order software solution will put all your key procurement processes on screen, with custom reporting and data export.

There are many advantages. Firstly, purchase order software that is located in the ‘cloud’ can be accessed securely, at any time, day or night from anywhere in the world via the internet. Secondly there is no software or hardware for a schools internal IT team to have to install and support – the system is run as SAS (Software as a Service) and all updates / security are part of the package. If the system is transactional based (meaning instantaneous updating of the data base structure) then all users are working on the most up to date information.

The obvious items such as listing the correct items (including catalogue numbers where applicable) to be ordered, together with prices, delivery information, dates and any special instructions, will all need to be included. Additional information such as who in the school has ordered the items will help in the case of supplier queries. Your terms and conditions for the supplier are also key, as the purchase order forms the basis of a legal contract to supply.

A schools purchase order system is designed to put on screen the procurement process of raising and getting approval for items ordered by the organisation, that previously were paper or spreadsheet based. By doing so, not only will the process be fully auditable, but the approval process can be set based on value or school rules (e.g., departmental structure) to suit the organisation. Being digital, searching and reporting facilities will again be customised, and finance departments would have full visibility of all purchasing, both past, present and future, to make forecasting easier and more accurate.

This will depend on the size and complexity of the educational organisation. For small schools where the requirement and the approval process is straight forward, launching such a system to all relevant employees at the same time is sensible. Where the organisation has multiple locations, and more complex structures, then a roll out approach based of, say, a department / location at a time can have benefits, as the success on a smaller scale will assist in deployment to the rest of the organisation. Training is also key, and the modern approach is to use videos based on the final purchase order software version, available at all times to staff, as part of the system. In this way the problems of getting everyone together, without interruption – the classic issue - are avoided.

Purchase to Pay or PTP, is where you import and match approved Purchase Orders with Supplier Invoices using a Purchase Order Software System. With the ability to import delivery notes that can also be matched to Purchase orders and Invoices, the whole procurement process is managed in one software solution. Add in the ability to extract data – such as approved supplier invoices- as a CSV file that can then be imported to an accounts system, that can then be paid, the purchasing cycle is complete. Integration with major cloud based accounts systems such as Xero is also possible by using provided API's.

An online purchase order system should have the function to import delivery notes that can then be matched to the original purchase order. In this way short deliveries or other discrepancies can be identified and actioned. A useful function is for the system to present only purchase order line items that have not been fully receipted to those which are looking to reconcile deliveries.

Data such as Purchase Order information and Supplier invoices in a Purchase To Pay version - should be available for export and importation to a target accounts system. To avoid the need for API development, a properly structured CSV file, with headings and columns set to match the requirements of the target accounts system, will provide an ideal format. Data can then be easily extracted and imported as and when required, also allowing a checking stage to be carried out by the finance team. This information can also be set to run as a report on a regular basis, ensuring the same information is not exported more than once. For schools using Xero there is a direct API link available for automating this process.

Purchase Order Management is the process by which a school dictates the way all items purchased go through all the correct checks and balances. A digital purchase order system will put this process on screen, following the relevant approval rules required. Purchase Order raisers (i.e. Teachers, Bursars and office staff) can create purchase orders and submit for approval, with supporting documents and justification notes on a workflow based structure. Approvers should have the ability to challenge the PO raiser on any item such as price or justification, via the workflow, and the raiser to amend and re submit the purchase order, until all those in the approval chain are satisfied to proceed with the order.

The workflow process should match the internal rules the organisation wishes to adopt. For example, orders for items below a certain value may not require formal approval – noting that full visibility to orders placed is always available. Or all orders should have an approval process, that maybe based on the schools structure, or value, with finance perhaps being last in the approval chain internally. Once set, these rules should be changeable as part of the admin control available in the system. For ease once an approval task is initiated, the system immediately emails the next person in the approval chain to alert them to action required.