How to get management “buy-in” for purchase invoice and order automation

Ever wonder why is Finance always at the back of the queue for investment? The one common characteristic of every finance team is that it is always crazy busy. This is exacerbated each month-end in the scramble to get everything processed to produce the month-end accounts, management information pack, and quarterly VAT returns as well as the annual pain of year-end and the subsequent audit. Most finance departments are becoming increasingly frustrated by their inability to evolve and adopt better methodologies simply because there are always “more important” projects for the corporate cash and available resources. Unfortunately, it is equally […]

A fundamental problem with current “Financial Management”

Nobody is going to argue that good decision-making takes place when we have all the relevant information, immediately to hand, influenced by our experience, PRIOR to making the decision. So, there can be no argument that good financial management works the same. For business, once a contract has been agreed or a purchase order placed, the following transaction processing is simply accounting, the diligent recording and processing the resulting documents, (i.e. the order and the invoice), to meet all the statutory requirements in a timely manner. So, what is the “real-time” information that finance provides to the budget holders – the people […]

The best way to cut your PO approval time

When I first joined Compleat, I discovered that some products dedicated to automating the purchase process were tackling problems I had never dealt with in my career as a marketer, but not CompleatOrder. That one hit home. Here at Compleat, we organise quite a few events every year: In 2016, we exhibited at Charity Finance Summit, the Business Show, and FinTech Connect Live. For each event, I had to deal with many different suppliers, some offering the same products, and some others providing services we could purchase from other suppliers we already had done business with. How could I stay […]

Finance Managers: Why is e-invoicing “a step too far”?

Don’t answer that – it is a standard “no win” question. But unfortunately, it is also increasingly applicable to any finance department that is still processing paper invoices. The emotional challenge for finance people is that the paper invoice represents the critical source document for everything that is bought or sold and their entire career experience has been founded on the paper invoice being sacrosanct. So, it is not surprising that senior finance executives faced with the proposal of removing all the paper invoices use the term “a step too far”. So, what is the problem? The common reasons for the “step too […]