How do I eliminate invoices without orders and move to e-billing? This is the double question that Acxias experts set out to answer at an online seminar in mid-December, followed by some thirty purchasing, procurement and finance decision-makers. The "wild purchases" at the origin of these invoices, made outside the box, lead to a drift in expenditure and additional processing costs.
Generally delegated to prescribers and end-users, indirect purchases result in numerous invoices without orders, for goods or services purchased from unre referenced suppliers, often without monitoring or validation of commitments. These "wild shopping" pose problems on several levels: in relation to regulatory obligations (duty of care to suppliers, compliance with regulatory deadlines, "audit trail" of billing flows, etc.) first, but also in terms of efficiency and expenditure. "Invoices without orders related to these purchases generate a significant increase in processing times and costs, in order to identify applicants, verify compliance with the conditions possibly agreed upstream, or even carry out referencing when it comes to new suppliers," Bertrand Gabriel, director of development and strategic accounts at Acxias, said in his introduction. "Because these purchases are made outside the box, they also lead to a drift in expenditure, due to low competition and unsericed terms by a professional buyer."
Controlling these expenditures, in order to generate additional productivity gains and savings, requires the control of consumption and systematization of orders, with competition from suppliers, as well as the deployment of electronic billing. As an example, Acxias estimates that competitiveness generates between 3% and 15% of gains on wild spending, with an average of around 7%. For Bertrand Gabriel, on the basis of the hundred projects conducted in 15 years by the agency, however, there would be no quick fix. "Optimization requires a combination of good practices, appropriate tools to deploy these practices, and driving change to facilitate the ownership of these tools by internal users and suppliers," he explained, adding that "the key to not having to process invoices without orders is the quality of processes ahead of supplier accounting."
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Full report of the webinar: "Stop invoices without orders!"
More information: replay, demo, presentation slides