How to get self-billing and PO-matching without a heavy IT project?

Significant benefits quickly flow from self-billing and PO-matching:

• Significant reductions in paper and process.
• Orders can be instantly reconciled to deliveries with a high level of automation.
• Invoices can be actioned for payment quickly, as suppliers basically do their own 3-way match as goods leave their premises.
• Headcounts, errors and control risks in finance functions are all reduced.
• If linked to early payment or supply chain finance, suppliers can be paid before delivery leading to significant discounts on the cost of goods.

But these are two capabilities that are generally expensive and complicated to implement - restricted to the largest companies, as a result.

PrimaTrade's platform brings self-billing and PO-matching into the reach of many more businesses.

The capabilities can be switched on without a heavy IT project, regardless of the accounting system or ERP of the buyer.

What are self-billing and PO-matching?

• Self-billing (or e-invoicing or paperless invoicing) means your suppliers do not send you invoices to be processed in the usual way. Invoices are, effectively, created directly as data in your accounting system, so there is no head office activity to scan, key in, and reconcile invoices to supplier accounts.
• PO-matching (or SKU-matching) means that when suppliers ship products and bill you for them, they also tell you which of your open purchase orders are specifically being filled. This action pulls together billing, logistics and order information and means that suppliers are, effectively, performing a 3-way match for you as products leave their premises.

I don’t have a huge IT budget or time to wait.

Self-billing and PO-matching are both complex processes and usually businesses have to replace or substantially enhance their accounting systems (“ERP”) in order to set up these arrangements.

But PrimaTrade's middleware solution means that you can have the benefits of self-billing and PO-matching without replacing your accounting system or ERP and without a heavy IT project. In fact, you can just switch on our technology and benefits will flow immediately.

So what miracle is this?

PrimaTrade’s platform sits in between the ERP of the buyer and the supplier, organising the communication between the two. It is a connection layer.

How does it work?

Self-billing:

1. Suppliers create their invoices in their own systems in the usual way.
2. They log into our portal and follow an intuitive process to upload their invoices and digitise them. Yes – suppliers digitise their own invoices supported by built-in checks so that they get their data right.
3. The platform then provides the resulting data directly to the buyer's accounting system ("ERP") in a standardised form.

PO-matching:

1. If the buyer wants to enable this, the open purchase order file needs to be provided to us and we then allocate purchase orders to suppliers.
2. Suppliers can then select their purchase orders and indicate the price and quantity that has been filled.
3. We then reconcile the PO match to the commercial invoice and enable automated approval processes and early payments.
4. If the buyer's approval processes operate at PO level, we can also automatically generate "sales invoices" for the buyer's accounting systems.

So it is not without an IT project?

That’s right – but the work involved is simple and straightforward.

There is an inbound feed to our platform of purchase orders and an outbound feed of invoice data in a standard format to the ERP or accounting system.

Most importantly:

• In our PrimaTrade platform, suppliers remain free to create their invoices in their usual way and in their own systems. So they can easily comply with their own local regulations, customs, exchange controls and logistics needs. By using our clever OCR system, suppliers rapidly digitise their invoice online so that the buyer’s accounting system can be fed directly.
• And the PO-matching process is simple to set up as we can receive purchase order data in many different ways – and there is no requirement for buyers to have integrated their purchase orders into their ERP.

For one of our clients, with 80,000 open purchase orders across 1,000 stock suppliers in 20 countries, we went live with a pilot in 2 weeks (no IT project). After the pilot proved-out the capabilities, we then initiated a global roll-out with 2-way integration to the ERP and purchase order feeds. This took 6 weeks to go live and generated substantial and immediate cost savings.

And there are other benefits too …

Our OCR engines also handle logistics paperwork – like bills of lading, packing lists, inspection reports, ESG documents etc. This means that suppliers can digitise much more than just invoices – in fact all of their paperwork can flow through this single gateway.

And that capability leads to the completion of a 3-way match at shipment (POs to invoices to transport documents) and to instant, automated invoice approvals and early payments to suppliers.

Our household-name clients are achieving savings of 1% or more on the cost of goods by streamlining their processes.

Just ask us for references!

To find out more, including how PrimaTrade is already helping large retail brands to achieve supply chain visibility and strengthen supplier relationships via self-billing, PO-matching and early payment, please visit www.prima.trade and sign up for our company updates or book a call with one of our representatives here.

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