Controls and Approvals: Purchase Orders, Vendor Bills, Quotes, Sales Orders, Expense Reports

Controls

Controls and Approvals: Purchase Orders, Vendor Bills, Quotes, Sales Orders, Expense Reports - CFOs, VPs of finance and controllers are their organizations’ watchdogs. Having fiduciary controls over money with a company expense tracker is their responsibility. They need to know where the money is, where it came from and where it’s going at all times. Making sure they have that ability is critical to an organization’s success. With a robust, integrated business expense tracker, your finance team will have the controls and insight they need to monitor money as it comes in and goes out.

Incoming

Sales Quotes. Your sales team wants to make the sale. It’s why you hired them, right? But sometimes, their sales goals might conflict with your accounting and finance team’s goal, which is to ensure a certain level of profitability. So while your sales team may want to drastically discount the product or service to close a deal, accounting and finance needs the capability to make sure certain margins are set and maintained. This is easily accomplished through sales controls. Users can create and set gross profit margin thresholds according to the company’s financial objectives. If a sales quote meets the pre-set requirements, the deal approved.

But what happens when the minimum threshold isn’t met? The pre-set controls will prohibit the approval and supervisors are notified electronically to review the quote. Need an exception? Perhaps a sale rep is pursuing a large deal. The system can put a pending transaction on hold and notify the finance team to review it before it is rejected or accepted into the system. Supervisors simply open expense reports, the quote, and review or reject it.

Sales Orders. The controls for a sales order provide even more options to qualify a sale. An integrated accounting system will determine:

• Is the credit card valid, authorized and accepted?
• Does the customer have an appropriate credit limit?
• Is a customer’s credit on hold for any reason?
• Is the shipping location valid?
• Is the customer authorized to purchase this particular item?
•  Have pricing and margin levels been met?

All of the parameters set will be applied as the sale moves through the control and approval process. If any conditions aren’t met, the sale is flagged and a supervisor receives an alert to review and then approve or reject the order.

Outgoing

Corporate fraud is still on an upward trend. Understandably, companies want rigorous controls on any money going out the door. A robust accounting system offers the functionality to set controls and parameters to fit your organization.

Purchase Orders and Vendor Bills. Creating a tiered approval approach give accounting departments flexible control. An accounting clerk may have the ability to approve purchase orders and vendor bills from $0 - $1,000. For amounts $1,001 - $50,000, the additional approval of a manager may be required. Beyond that, the CFO may be the additional approval. By the time totals reach $250,000, the CEO may need to approve. Companies can set thresholds according to their own specifications.

In addition, different approval thresholds can be set for various departments throughout the company, allowing for even stronger internal controls.

The goal is to provide an audit trail – knowing who approved what and when they approved it – so that CFOs can be assured money is going where it should.

Expense Reports. They’re the scourge of every traveling employee. Saving receipts (or maybe losing them instead) and then manually entering them in Excel is a system whose time has passed. Now, employees can access the system on their phone, add a meal, snap a picture of the receipt and hit “submit.” Everything automates into a single expense report which a supervisor can quickly review and approve. The report then moves to the Accounts Payable or Payroll team for payment via check or direct deposit.

With a robust accounting software solution, you can improve internal controls without sacrificing simplicity and flexibility.

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