Purchase order management at Tideway

“Any company that manages other people’s assets has to ensure the tight and transparent control of property-related expenditure – so it’s essential to be in full control of the associated processes”.

So says Robin Cansfield, Accounts & Systems Manager at Tideway Investment Management. “Purchase Order Management (POM) has significantly changed the way we work. It’s given us the ability to monitor and control costs in a way that has radically improved the way we do business and the service we can offer to our clients.”

“With Trace’s POM software we now automate from the beginning. Purchase orders for contracts are easily created for the length of the contract with a couple of intuitive key strokes.”

“And ad-hoc orders are created by the manager as needed, again very quickly and easily, meaning that coding, and comparison to budget, is implemented at the point of commitment.”

“Trace’s POM is based on ‘management by exception’. This means that intervention by managers and senior staff is only necessary for exceptional items such as invoices that fall outside a tight agreed pricing range.”

Graham Davies of Trace Solutions adds: “Management by exception means you can remove the day-to-day tasks that take up so much of your time, and still have the ability to review and make changes where required. This level of automation allows companies such as Tideway to bring a much greater level of control and professionalism to their management of a client’s property assets against agreed budgets.”

Robin Cansfield continues: “As anyone who has worked in this industry will appreciate, this eradicates coding errors with regards to both properties and expenditure headings, as well as highlighting funding issues at the very earliest stage.”

“When the invoice is received, unless there are instructions from the manager to the contrary, it goes straight to the purchase order section to be processed and will only be queried if the amount is significantly different to what was originally input.”

“In the past, invoices have had to be approved by managers, who are extremely busy people. This led to delays, phone calls and friction with suppliers. Now approvals are all built in at the start of the process.”

“Suppliers now know that payment will be prompt, which has led to a significant drop in supplier calls and improvements to our relationships with them.”

“And our service charge team can now devote more attention to the details, rather than spending significant amounts of time on the collation and journaling of records. This is especially important given the time constraints in the RICS new codes of practice.”

Tideway is a specialised property management company responsible for controlling significant assets in the commercial and residential UK market place. With a very large number of invoices, coming into the business on a daily basis, relating to a huge number of properties, their ability to maintain control of costs and budgets whilst managing relationships with suppliers is fundamental to their success.