Control Spending

Budget Setup in your Free Purchase Order Software

This post reviews how to set up the budget tracking feature in your Live Copy of SpendMap.

If you’d like to see the budget tracking feature in action before you get started, it’s already set up in your Evaluation Copy of SpendMap (the copy with the sample data), and there’s a Walkthrough Tutorial called “Budget Tracking” that you can try, using the drop-list at the top-right of the Main Menu in SpendMap…

OK, here’s what you do to set it up in your Live Copy…

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Approving Supplier Invoices the Easy Way

Are you looking for an easier way to approve your suppliers’ invoices for payment?  Tired of all the paperwork, phone calls and emails?

SpendMap’s Invoice Approval and A/P Interface Module really simplifies the process.

Check out our new video tutorial, below.  Or better yet, take a free test drive of our Pro Version and see for yourself.

Time-Based and Overall Budgets in your Free Purchase Order Software

Hanna is the Purchasing Manager at a construction company in California and asked about setting up budgets for her departments and jobs…

“When a department buys something, like a computer or office supplies for example, it goes against their monthly budget but when we buy something for one of our jobs, the budget can span several months in some cases.”

No problem Hanna, you can track both “time-based” and “overall” budgets in SpendMap.

For your time-based budgets, you would typically allocate funds by month, quarter or year but when you allocate an overall budget to a project or a job, that budget will be available for the life of the project, regardless of how long that takes.

Theoretically an individual Cost Center (department, project, job, etc.) could have both time-based budgets and an overall budgets but that’s pretty unusual.  Typically it’s one or the other.

You can enter both time-based and overall budgets in the Cost Center Master File…

Budgets in Purchase Order Software

Purchase Order Management can be Scary for SMBs!

Where is all the money going?  Will we have enough to meet our commitments?  Who bought all this Halloween candy?!?

Get control of your company’s spending and see where the money is going, with SpendMap’s free Purchase Order Management Software.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Signature Line on PO Form in your Free Purchase Order Software

Garrett wants his manager’s name to appear in the signature line at the bottom of his Purchase Order form, rather than his own name…

“On our current Purchase Orders in the system, it shows my name at the bottom of the PO.  However, we need to have another manager sign-off on POs.  Is it possible to change the name?”

PO Form Signature Line

Yes, SpendMap can do that.  Just select this menu…
– PURCHASING > Setup system> Purchase order settings > PO printing settings > Text-Based Field Positions and Field Settings > Standard

…scroll down to field #85 and in the Title Field, fill in your Manager’s name that you would like to appear in the signature line on your Purchase Orders.

If you leave the Title Field blank, SpendMap will print the name of the person who entered/created the PO in SpendMap but if you fill in the Title, that’s what will print instead.  You can enter someone’s name, or maybe just “Authorized by”, or something like that.

But did you know that SpendMap offers a Requisitions and Approvals Module, that your managers can use to approve/reject orders right in SpendMap, without having to forward a copy of each order manually?  You can learn more here.

Shameless Plug: Email Approvals

Need another reason to upgrade your free Purchase Order Software to the paid/commercial version of SpendMap?

With the new Email Approval feature, you can approve and reject Requisitions right from the body of the email notification that you receive from SpendMap, without even having to log in to the system.

And even better, the emails are mobile responsive, so you can approve Requisitions on your smartphone or tablet, even if you’re not connected to the Internet.  Could we make that morning subway ride any more productive?

Check out the news announcement or click the screenshot below…

Approve requisitions via email.

Click to see more…

Open Order Warning in your Free Purchase Order Software

Nadine runs a property management company in New York and wants to know if she has any open orders for an item before placing a subsequent order for more of the same…

“Were trying to get organized (using SpendMap) but sometimes the left hand doesn’t know what he right hand is doing.  How does a Buyer know if someone else already ordered something?”

Sure Nadine, now that all your Buyers are using SpendMap, it’s easy for them to check on each other’s work and eliminate duplicate orders.  Here are a few options to consider…

  1. Check before you start:  You can always use View PO Status or View Item History to see the orders that are out there, before going into your PO Work Area to create a new order…
    – PURCHASING > Status & Inquiries > PO Status > Current POs
    – PURCHASING > Status & Inquiries > Item History
  2. Check while you’re at it:  Better yet, while adding new items to Purchase Orders in your PO Work Area, you can also use the [History] button at the bottom of the PO Line Item Details screen, to see the complete purchase history of the item.  If you click to see the [Details] of a recent purchase, you will see both the original order quantity, as well as the quantity on-order.
  3. Let SpendMap check for you:  Even better yet, to make sure that your Buyers are aware of any open orders, without them having to proactively look for that information, you can use the Open Order Warning feature in SpendMap, to actively warn them if they attempt to create a duplicate order…

Open Order Warning

If you like the sound of #3 above, you can enable the feature by selecting an option for “Open Order Warning Option”, in here…
– PURCHASING > Setup system> Purchase Order settings > PO entry settings

Then, if Buyers try to create a new Purchase Order for an item that is already on an open (unreceived) order, they will get a warning message like this…

Open Order Warning in Free Purchase Order Software

 

What Really Scares Small Businesses? Wasting Money!

The thought of wasting money is pretty scary for most small and medium size businesses.

It’s hard enough to run a successful SMB these days, without having to worry about your staff spending money that they shouldn’t be.

Get control of your company’s spending and see where the money is going, with SpendMap’s free Purchase Order Management Software.

Happy Halloween everyone!