Purchase orders and approvals

A name at the counter
is not an order.

Nobody commits company money without an order somebody named approved, and every invoice lands against it.

Book a demo → Where the committed cost shows

A trade counter: an operative with a docket, a scanner and a till

In plain terms

Purchase order software puts a controlled step between somebody deciding to spend and the money actually being committed. The order is raised, approved by a named person, sent to the supplier, and the invoice that arrives later is matched against it rather than guessed at.

In Unibuild the order carries the job it belongs to, so committed cost appears on that job the moment it is approved rather than at the month end. Approval is a committee rather than one signature, orders can be raised from the phone, and the supplier invoice lands against the order it was raised for.

How buying usually works

Bought on account with a name and a job reference at the counter.

There is no order, so there is nothing to check the invoice against when it turns up four weeks later.

The invoice arrives

Nobody can say which job. It gets coded to whichever seems most likely.

Job costing quietly wrong

Half past seven

A driver rings to ask if he can spend two hundred pounds. Somebody says yes.

No record it happened

Discovered at month end

Which is exactly the point at which nothing can be done. The job is finished.

The money is gone

Committed cost

The only question that matters on a live job, and nobody can answer it.

Flying blind

A day a week

Somebody retyping supplier, value and job reference off a stack of paper.

And still behind

Who approved it

A shrug, and three people who each think it was one of the others.

Nobody accountable

The underlying issue Spend you find out about at the month end is spend you can no longer do anything about It has to be visible on the day

Raised against a jobApproval committeeRaised on the phoneSent to the supplierCommitted cost, same dayInvoice matched to orderCredit notesSupplier registerSupplier compliance documentsSpend by supplierSpend by jobTravel ordersFuel ordersApproval stampedNumbered in sequenceNothing retyped Raised against a jobApproval committeeRaised on the phoneSent to the supplierCommitted cost, same dayInvoice matched to orderCredit notesSupplier registerSupplier compliance documentsSpend by supplierSpend by jobTravel ordersFuel ordersApproval stampedNumbered in sequenceNothing retyped

What the module does

Six things an account at the merchant cannot do.

An order, before
the money moves

Nothing is committed to a supplier without a numbered order that carries the job it belongs to. That is the whole mechanism, and everything else on this page follows from it.

Raised from the office or from the phone on site
The job reference is a field, not something said at a counter
Numbered in sequence, so gaps are visible
Sent to the supplier from the record

A document, not a conversationLive

Approved by
a committee

Approval goes to a configured list of people rather than one person who might be on a roof, and it is stamped with who gave it and when.

So a half past seven phone call is not the control
A director asking who approved it gets a name
Nobody is waiting on one signature to buy anything
And nobody can commit the business quietly

Authority, not availabilityLive

Committed cost,
on the day

An approved order lands on the job immediately, so the commercial position includes money that is spent but not yet invoiced. That is the number a manager actually needs.

Against a contract value that has not moved
Visible while the job is still running
Rather than at a month end when it is history
Which is the difference between control and reporting

While you can still actLive

The invoice lands
on the order

A supplier invoice is matched to the order it was raised against rather than coded to whichever project looks most likely four weeks after the fact.

Which removes the day a week of retyping
And the quiet miscoding that follows it
Credit notes and refunds reduce the job, rather than sitting in a drawer
So the job cost is the job cost

Matched, not guessedLive

One supplier
register

Suppliers are records rather than three versions of the same merchant across a phone, a spreadsheet and somebody's memory, with their compliance documents held against them.

New accounts are opened with firms somebody has checked
Insurance and compliance paperwork sits on the supplier
Spend by supplier becomes a number you can negotiate with
Rather than a total nobody has ever assembled

Who you actually buy fromLive

Ordered from
the phone

An operative standing at a trade counter can raise the order there rather than ringing the office, which is the only version of this that survives contact with a Tuesday morning.

Because a control people work around is not a control
Approval still applies, it just does not need an office
Travel and fuel are ordered the same way as materials
So the spend that usually vanishes is captured too

Usable at the counterLive

Ask what has been committed on your biggest live job today.

Not invoiced. Committed. Most firms can produce the figure a fortnight after the month end, which is a fortnight after it stopped being useful.

Book a demo → 30 minutes. The demo runs on our own data.

The detail a commercial manager asks about

Six things that decide whether people use it.

Purchase order control fails for behavioural reasons rather than technical ones. These are the six, and what has to be true.

It has to work at the counter

If raising an order means ringing the office, people will buy first and tell somebody later, and the control exists only on paper. Raising it from the phone while standing at the merchant is the difference between a process and a policy nobody follows.

Approval cannot depend on one person

A single approver becomes a bottleneck within a fortnight, and the workaround is somebody being asked to approve their own order. A committee means the control holds without anybody waiting, which is why it is a list rather than a signature.

Committed is not the same as invoiced

This is the distinction the whole module exists for. Invoiced cost tells you about the past. Committed cost tells you what the job is already going to cost before the paperwork catches up, and it is the only version a manager can still act on.

Credit notes have to come back off

Returns and refunds that sit in a drawer leave the job carrying its full original cost forever. Handling them on the order is unglamorous and it is why a job cost that looks right in month two still looks right at final account.

The supplier list is a register, not a memory

Three versions of the same merchant across a phone, a spreadsheet and somebody's head make spend analysis impossible and account opening careless. One record per supplier, with their compliance documents on it, is what turns buying into something you can negotiate about.

It is not an accounts package

Unibuild controls the commitment and the job costing. It is not doing your bookkeeping and it does not file your returns. Where the two need to meet, that is an integration conversation at implementation rather than something to assume either way.

The order is the easy half. The cost position is why you wanted it.

Committed spend against contract value, while the job is still running, is what this feeds. That is worth seeing on real numbers rather than described.

See the cost position → Or call the office on UK hours

Questions

Asked by whoever
signs the cheques.

Can an operative raise an order from a trade counter?+

Yes, from the phone, which is the only version of purchase order control that survives contact with a Tuesday morning. If raising an order means ringing the office, people buy first and tell somebody afterwards, and the control exists only on paper. Approval still applies; it just does not require anybody to be at a desk.

Who approves orders, and what if they are unavailable?+

Approval goes to a configured committee rather than one named signature, so nobody is waiting on one person to buy materials. It is stamped with who approved it and when. A single approver becomes a bottleneck within a fortnight and the workaround is always somebody approving their own order, which is why it is a list.

What is committed cost, and why does it matter?+

It is money the business has agreed to spend but has not yet been invoiced for. An approved order lands on its job immediately, so the commercial position on a live job includes it. Invoiced cost tells you about the past; committed cost tells you what the job is already going to cost while there is still something you can do about it. That distinction is the reason the module exists.

Does it stop invoices being coded to the wrong job?+

That is the point of raising the order first. The invoice is matched to the order it was raised against rather than coded four weeks later to whichever project looks most likely. It removes both the day a week of retyping and the quiet miscoding that follows it. In the live system 587 of 711 supplier invoices arrived already attached to their order.

What happens to credit notes and returns?+

They come back off the order, and therefore off the job. This sounds minor and it is the reason a job cost that looks right in month two still looks right at final account. Credit notes that sit in a drawer leave the job carrying its full original cost indefinitely, which is one of the more common ways a margin quietly disappears.

Does it replace our accounts package?+

No, and we would rather say so plainly. Unibuild controls the commitment, the approval and the job costing. It is not doing your bookkeeping and it does not file returns. Where the two need to meet, that is an integration conversation at implementation rather than something to assume in either direction.

Can we see what we spend with each supplier?+

Yes, because suppliers are records rather than three versions of the same merchant across a phone, a spreadsheet and somebody's memory. Spend by supplier becomes a figure you can negotiate with, and their insurance and compliance documents sit on the same record, so account opening is a decision rather than a habit. There are 318 suppliers and 279 compliance documents on the live register.

The commercial modules