Purchasing software: purchase management in Uniconta

Purchasing starts with a need. A wholesaler sees that an item is running low, a service firm needs materials for a job, a small producer is short of a raw material. Someone decides which supplier to use, at what price and on what terms. Those terms are recorded in a purchase order. The order is the instruction to the supplier, but it is also your own evidence of what was agreed.

Then comes delivery. Someone checks what has arrived: is the quantity right, is it the correct item, is anything damaged. In a business that holds stock, this is the moment to record the goods receipt, so that the stock in your books matches what is physically on the shelves. In a service business it means confirming that the work or delivery has been done.

Last comes the purchase invoice. You compare it with the order and with the receipt. If all three agree, the invoice can go to payment. If they differ, you go back to the supplier. This matching of order, receipt and invoice is the core of a reliable purchasing process, and it feeds straight into your accounts payable.

Besides one-off orders, almost every company has recurring purchases such as subscriptions, maintenance contracts, licences and equipment rental. You do not want to walk through the order each time. You want them to come back on a fixed rhythm with a clear end date, so you do not keep paying for something nobody uses any more.

What a smaller company mostly needs is simplicity and discipline. One fixed way of ordering, one place where suppliers are kept, and the rule that nothing goes out without a purchase order. That does not take a large team. It takes software that makes it easy to do the right thing and awkward to work around it. Once everyone uses the same data, you can also answer questions faster, such as what is still open with a given supplier and what was ordered last month.

Uniconta is cloud ERP and accounting software, and purchasing is one of its parts. You record purchase orders, including recurring purchase orders for subscriptions and service contracts, and you keep them in a purchase order archive. Discounts and payment terms can be set on each order line, so the supplier agreement sits in the order itself.

When goods are received, Uniconta updates the stock straight away. You do not need a separate step to adjust the stock after the delivery note has been checked. This ties in with inventory management, because receipt and stock use the same data.

For supplier management, Uniconta offers a few practical things. A supplier's name and address are validated through VIES, the European system for VAT numbers. You can store an unlimited number of contacts per supplier. Supplier numbers follow an automatic number series. And in purchasing you can search by item number, description, category and supplier.