Productivity Hikes 37% With Custom PO Management System
Prutha shaherawala
Whether you are a startup owner or the CEO of an MNC, one of the most important tasks for any business is organizing and controlling expenditures. You require a streamlined system for managing your purchases and keeping track of your budgets.
A purchase order (PO) management system organizes and tracks your money. Many companies maintain a manual system with sheets of data and tickets. But this is a time-consuming process that increases human errors and negatively affects productivity.
The benefits of an automated PO management system are –
Easily create and manage purchase orders - A digital purchase order system makes it simple to create new orders in minutes. Additionally, it collects all your purchase orders in a single place so it is easy to track and manage.
Streamline process - An online purchase order system makes the purchasing process efficient, visible, and easily controllable.
One system, many solutions- Create purchase orders, contact your vendors, manage deliveries, and ensure timely payments within the same system.
How a Paper-intensive Purchasing Order System is Affecting Your Productivity?
Are you managing a ton of paper documents in your organization for all the purchases? You know how much time and resources it takes up.
A purchase order system requires many subtasks such as –
Keeping track of inventory
Maintaining lists of vendors and suppliers
Categorizing and indexing all expense documents from invoices to purchase orders
All these tasks are time-consuming to do manually. Plus they are prone to errors, so your employees have to recheck and verify each document multiple times, thus having a longer life cycle. Whichever industry you belong to, having a paper-intensive purchase ordering system can harm your company. Such menial, repetitive work can be done within minutes by an automated purchase order system.
One such roofing company based in the USA approached us to automate their purchase ordering system.
Here is a list of challenges he was facing.
His business was suffering greatly due to inventory mismanagement.
Purchase reports were getting lost in mountains of paperwork.
Vendors received the orders too late and were unable to meet the deadlines of the roofing projects.
So we set out to digitize the entire purchase ordering process with a powerful, simple-to-use web application.
Our goal was to create a user-friendly, scalable web app that the employees of the roof installation company could use with ease in their day-to-day work lives. The purchase order management system would manage the creation of purchase orders, procurement of materials, and subsequent payments.
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Here is how we used PHP to develop a purchase order system for the construction industry.
Our PHP-powered Purchase Order Management Solution
We wanted to develop a web app for tracking and managing purchase orders. But beyond that, it was also about taking the entire company’s workflow online. This way, the client’s company would cut down administrative costs, streamline the ordering and payment process and also minimize loss due to human error.
Our solution included two main goals-
Generating purchase orders
Track and manage purchases
The first task in developing the ideal web solution – selecting the right technologies.
We used MySQL to manage the large database. AWS server to host the web solution, and PHP as our web language.
But why did we prefer PHP to develop the purchase order management solution?
PHP offers the security and scalability that is necessary when automating business processes. With PHP, we ensure an easy-to-use, secure web solution that would protect sensitive data.
PHP also provides the performance and speed required to handle the heavy usage by hundreds of employees.
Why use Yii2 Framework for developing this PO management system?
We used the Yii2 framework to develop the PO management system due to its component-based architecture. This way, the roofing company could scale this system in the future or reuse components in other solutions.
Yii also provides extensibility and flexibility to our developers for creating a custom solution from scratch.
Let’s look in detail at how we solved our client’s challenges.
Generating Purchase Orders for Roofing Contracts with 5 Clicks
We wanted to follow a simple straightforward process for creating a purchase order. So that the employees could easily learn the system and quickly create and manage purchase orders. Therefore we designed a 5-click process for creating a purchase order within just a few minutes.
Step 1 – Selecting Project
There are mainly two ways of creating a purchase order in the web app.
Option 1: Open the project you are working on and generate a purchase order as shown in the image below.
Option 2: Go to the menu section and directly generate purchase orders. When you click on ‘Generate Purchase Order’ from the menu, you are prompted with a Search Project screen. All you have to do is search for your project name or number.
Step 2 – Selecting Bid
Select the estimated bid the client has approved. The purchase order software will automatically generate the purchase report on the basis of the bid you selected. We maintain a directory of all the vendors your company works with, along with a list of contact persons at the vendor company.
Step 3 – Selecting Vendor
Now all you have to do is select the vendor of your choice. The software will prompt all the people whose contact details are stored in the database. You may choose the contact of your choice and all the details will be filled in automatically.
Another important feature we added is the details of the delivery contact – that is the employee on your side who will be handling the vendor. Thus when the vendor receives the purchase order, they also get the contact details of the employee to be in touch with at your organization.
Now just fill in details about tax exemptions and delivery addresses (even that can be pre-filled to the company’s division location or project site) and you are ready to go.
Step 4 – Selecting Items
You get a list of all the materials and equipment you need for the project (as written in the bid). Just tick the items you need to order, add taxes, and save the purchase report.
Step 5 – Verify and Mail Purchase Order
You can download or print the order report. If needed, you can also mail it directly to the vendor. To make it as smooth as possible, we have added the feature of adding digital signatures and mail templates so that the accountant can just attach the purchase order and mail it instantly.
Tracking Purchase Receipts is Easier Than Ever
When you have an organization that spans multiple divisions and handles hundreds of ongoing projects, keeping track of your payments can be tough.
To make it easier, we created a PO management module that lists all the purchase orders in a single place. You are able to see all the necessary details about a purchase order at a quick glance such as –
PO number
Name of purchase order
Description about the order
Date of creation
Payment amount
Vendor name
Location of the property
All of these fields are searchable and sortable.
For instance, you can see all the purchase orders created by an employee named ‘Emily Skye’. Or all the purchase orders – pending and completed – sent to a particular vendor.
Results
Converting Bids into Purchase Orders
With this automated purchase ordering system, you can instantly generate purchase orders directly from the quotation of the project. It is just a matter of selecting the materials you want to order, and your PO is ready.
Tracking and Managing Orders
All your roofing purchase orders are collected in a single place. Get quick updates on their status, delivery date, property details, and more in a single place. Manage payments simply and efficiently.
Avoid Repeated Tasks
You only have to enter details once. The roofing software will fetch details automatically once it is stored in the database. For example, you entered the raw materials and equipment required for a project in the initial quotation or proposal. Then the web application will automatically create a purchase order for buying these raw materials with a click.
Other Industries To Benefit From Automated Purchase Order Generation & Management System
1. Construction Contractors
A similar web-based automation solution can be used in other sectors of the construction industry. Software that generates purchase orders and invoices directly from quotations is useful and time-saving.
Be it infrastructural or building construction or industrial, custom-made PO management software will streamline and speed up your material procurement process and prevent fraud.
Smaller, dedicated construction contractors such as roofers, drywall installers, tile setting, glass and glazing, wallpaper installers, and demolition contractors can also use a similar web solution. It will help you improve vendor relationships while simplifying your order and stock management process.
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2. Wholesale Shops
Wholesalers buy products in large quantities from the manufacturers and then sell them to customers at lower rates compared to the retail market. An automated purchase ordering system is well-suited to this business model.
When you receive an order from your customers, you can directly generate a PO from the order list and send it to your manufacturer. Using a custom purchase order solution, you can eradicate the time-consuming process of going through customer orders and getting the required products. It will be done in just a few minutes.
By integrating an inventory management system into the PO system, you can even generate the POs automatically when your stock is running low.
Bringing your business online is a great way to enhance your process efficiency and increase employee productivity. A digital purchase order management system will help you accelerate your ordering and procuring process and get streamlined document management. If you are looking for a custom web solution for your business, contact Monocubed for professional web development services.
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Posted Aug 2, 2023
We developed a fully automated purchase order management system with PHP that increased productivity by 37%. Wondering how we did it? Read on to find out.
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Malone Construction
