As property and maintenance managers, you would need to have a good handle on your vendors and suppliers and to make sure their invoices are properly processed and paid timely. Traditionally companies have disjointed systems and groups for handling the accounts payable. This results in errors and extra manpower for managing the incoming invoices including getting the necessary backgrounds and approvals.
A comprehensive IWMS, property and maintenance management system needs to include strong financials and effective processes and screens for managing the accounts payable functions. In such a case, the management of AP invoices is more efficient and with less issues as the AP process is integrated with the operations and background information on the expenditure is readily available.
In this write up we focus on the environment for an accounts payable manager. We cover vendor management and other financials elements elsewhere.
Streamlined Home Page
An accounts payable manager needs to have a simple and effective home page. The home page should provide shortcuts for reviewing existing invoices and their aging as well as entering new invoices. It needs to include real time reminders and dashboards for the payables.
Receiving AP invoices – By email or entering directly
AP invoices may come in through mail, by email or be generated by the system. IWMS needs to provide an email address and supporting processes where vendors can email their invoices to that email address and from there the system to automatically create invoices with attached vendors invoices and route them for coding and approval.
When entering or coding an invoice, the system needs to recognize the vendor and bring in their payment term, address and bank instructions from their profile as defaults into the invoice.
The line items in the invoice need to be flexible as what account codes they are associated with. They need to consider “repair and maintenance” versus “capital expenditure” and any necessary “cost center” designations for proper posting and reporting.
Other considerations are the tax rates and currencies.
Generating invoices for purchase orders, change order, contracts and work orders
An IWMS needs to automate the generation of invoices for purchase orders which are delivered and are authorized to be paid. The connection between the invoices and deliveries need to be automated and smooth. Similarly, invoices for completed work orders or committed contracts and change orders needs to be generated automatically.
Payment batches
Payment batches allow selecting a group of invoices for payment such as for a check-run. The payment batch needs to be routed to the responsible people for review and approvals. Once a payment batch is approved, it needs to generate the payments in whatever needed form such as checks or wire transfers. The paid invoices’ statuses are to be updated automatically.
Vendor information/history
An AP manager needs to be able pull up a vendor’s profile and review the financial history including the open invoices and their aging summary.
Financials reports
AP manager needs to have the relevant financial reports and bank information easily accessible for reference and double checking of the AP information.
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Mehdi Khalvati, Ph.D. is the president of Axxerion Inc. Axxerion IWMS/CMMS/Contract management are comprehensive and easy-to-use and easy to setup. They incorporate detailed financial information and functions including the AP management covered above. For more information, please review the list of our modules from the home page (AxxerionUSA.com). Please send your feedback, thoughts and comments to mehdi@axxerionusa.com.
