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The Consequences of Eliminating Purchase Orders (POs)

01/24/2018 By

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Should procurement eliminate purchase orders (POs) entirely? This is a daring concept in theory, provided an organization has the right processes and systems to control internal purchasing and buying activities and to protect against mistakes suppliers might create, accidentally or otherwise, for unsuspecting purchasing and accounts payable organizations to correct. These errors could include duplicate invoices, use of substitute products or materials, wrong line-level pricing, invoices based on the wrong quantities and invoices impacted by escalation/de-escalation clauses that are tracked incorrectly.

But procurement has been trained (mostly by control-crazy finance) to require the PO. In fact, think about CPOs touting 100% “no PO, no pay” policies.  Yes, it’s highly controlled, but does it make sense? Are the purported controls worth the cost and risk (in the form of time not monitoring other more important risks)? Procurement and AP organizations considering a “no PO” policy not only need to find ways to protect against these types of errors and mistakes, as well as outright fraud, either supplier-driven or internal. They also need to consider other side issues where key workarounds are necessary

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