Making Supplier Payments Simple With Electronic Consolidated Invoicing
Pertemps Recruitment Partnership Ltd provide temporary staff services to the Scottish Government (SG) core Departments, Executive Agencies and Non-Departmental Public Bodies.
Background
Prior to June 2002 SG staff completed a travel Prior to May 2004, temporary staff were ordered verbally by individual line managers. Individual invoices were produced for each temp and these were issued to line managers. Line managers would then internally gain approval for payment within their Division and include all relevant accounting information. It should be noted that it was not uncommon for this timescale to be anywhere between a couple of days and a couple of months. The approved invoice was then sent to Accounts Payable, Finance, to manually process onto the SGs Finance System.
Electronic Consolidated Invoicing
In order to simplify the above process the SG and Pertemps worked closely together to develop an efficient and effective payment tool that would meet the needs of both parties.
Since May 2004, SG staff request temps through one of the 8 Departmental HR teams using the roll-out of the eProcurement Scotl@nd Service (ePS) to cover temporary staff services. HR teams order through the Pertemps punchout site on ePS and enter the 4 pieces of accounting information required for the SG Finance System to allocate the appropriate customer costs.
Pertemps send one Electronic Consolidated Invoice (ECI) file per week for payment approval to each of the HR teams for all the temps supplied the previous week. The ECI file is compared against the individual order forms as per the agreed audit sample. The eight files are sent to Accounts Payable to upload into the SG Finance System. There is no manual entry by Accounts Payable. All weekly orders are then electronically distributed to the appropriate accounting details.
Benefits
The benefits to the SG of electronic consolidated invoicing include:
- Faster Payment - guaranteed payment to Pertemps and adherence to the SG Prompt Payment Charter
- Reduction in administrative costs for customers and the supplier
- Ease of use for both customers and the supplier
- Improvement in invoice accuracy
- Reduction in invoice queries
- Elimination of duplicate data entry and manual processing
- Fast and accurate data upload into Finance System
- Environmental benefits through saving paper
- Centralised electronic consolidated invoices for each of the 8 HR teams, with the individual temp requests providing a clear audit trail, improved management information and greater control
Achievements
As a result of the implementation of Pertemps ECI the SE will have eliminated the need to manually entering 14,560 invoices with a saving of over £122,000 in the current financial year (April 2004-March 2005) compared to the traditional process.
Supplier's Viewpoint
"Pertemps have greatly benefited from the inception of the eProcurement initiative and we believe that the SG has as well. Not only has this new system cut down on the large amount of invoices but has significantly improved prompt payment. Most importantly for us, a strong relationship has now been formed between Pertemps Credit Control and the SG Finance Team. This ensures that any queries can be dealt with promptly. From our point of view, we really feel that Pertemps are working in partnership with the SE to contribute to the success of the e-procurement initiative."
Nicola Brown, Pertemps SE Account Manager
More information …
To obtain further information relating to this article on the Scottish Government and Pertemps implementation of Electronic Consolidated Invoicing please contact:
eProcurement Scotland General Enquiries
Telephone: 0131 244 3618
eMail: eprocurement@scotland.gsi.gov.uk
www: www.eprocurementscotland.com
Sarah Stevenson
P2P Process Specialist, eProcurement Scotl@nd Programme team
Telephone: 0131 244 0723
eMail: Sarah.Stevenson@scotland.gsi.gov.uk
Pertemps Recruitment Partnership Limited - Fiona Tait
Telephone: 0131 225 7531
eMail: Fiona.Tait@pertemps.co.uk