In this instructional video, Sachin Sharma, founder of ProcureDesk, explains why companies that still manually enter purchase orders (POs) into QuickBooks or Xero eventually outgrow that approach. He outlines three clear warning signs: (1) the AP or PO handler becomes a bottleneck, causing delays and idle labor; (2) the same data is repeatedly re‑entered across emails, spreadsheets, and the accounting system, wasting time; and (3) employees purchase items first and only later ask the AP team to create a PO, undermining cost‑control. Sharma backs each sign with real‑world examples (construction sites, schools, Amazon orders) and a research finding that AP teams spend 8‑10 hours weekly on manual PO entry. He then recommends adopting a purchasing platform that integrates directly with QuickBooks, enabling self‑service request entry, automated approvals, and automatic PO creation. The video ends with a call‑to‑action to contact ProcureDesk specialists for a demo.
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Are you the PO bottleneck for the company? If you work in AP and you manually enter purchase orders in QuickBooks or Xero, then this video is for you. Now it's a good start to start entering purchase orders, right? You want to implement a control and all, but people don't have a direct way to enter purchase orders in QuickBooks. So guess what they do? They call you or send you an email and you are the person who's going and entering those purchase orders manually. Now here are the three signs which clearly tells you that your current process is not working and you need an upgrade where you're not able to keep up with the volume. Right? So let's talk about those three signs you should look for to see whether the current process is working or not. I am Sachin Sharma, I'm the founder of Procuredesk where we help growing companies automate their purchasing process. So number one is you are becoming the PO bottleneck, right? Very clear sign where you're not able to keep up with the volume. In a recent research we saw companies are spending or AP teams are spending eight to 10 hours a week just manually entering purchase orders. And especially with growing companies as they start scaling and this have more revenue, that means more purchase orders. Let's say you're in construction company and your foreman at the job site needs to order product. So what do you do? You call somebody at the head office or in the main office, they then go put a purchase order in, then they provide the PO number back to the foreman at the job site, then they order the product. So if you slow down and you don't have the, I would say the bandwidth to keep up with the volume, guess what? Material doesn't come on the job site. Your crew is sitting idle, right? So that's kind of the first sign we see is you'll start seeing things slowing down because you are becoming the bottleneck. Number two is you are reentering the same data multiple times. So someone sends you a, let's say you are in a school and you are responsible for ordering your teachers. Go to Amazon, take a screenshot, send it to you. Then you got to go to Amazon, type in the data, figure out what item they wanted to buy, maybe you want to put that in a spreadsheet, whatever the case might be, then you will go issue the purchase order by entering the PO in QuickBooks for example. And then you will then go back to the website, enter the same data, right? Or when the invoice comes in, now you're entering the Same data again. So is the manual re entry of the data, which takes time and if you're seeing yourself entering the same data again and again, it's time to look for automation. Number three is people are buying stuff and then letting you know. So let me explain what I mean. So typically the idea of a purchase order process is you, you want little bit of control that people are not just buying whatever they want to buy. So they should send you a request, you can look at it and you can put that into a system if they already purchase and then tell you three days after. That defeats the purpose of setting up a procurement process to begin with or having a purchase order process to begin with. So if you're seeing more and more cases like that where they put in a request or they just buy what they want to buy and then tell you and say, hey, can you put in a purchase order? That's a clear sign that the reason why you put this process is not working. You do not have cost control. What you have is a fake or a perception of a cost control. So if you're dealing with these three signs like you're becoming the pure bottleneck, things are slowing down, you are reentering the same data again and again. Or people are just buying when they want to buy and then later telling you and say, all right, I purchase it, can you enter a purchase order for me? Those are the clear signs that your current process is not working and you have outgrown QuickBooks. So what do you really do Here is what you typically land up doing when you are in a situation like that. What you need to look for is a purchasing system that talks to QuickBooks so that you can enable self service in this purchasing system. So imagine this, instead of you receiving a request, entering a po, then providing the PO number, they just go and put in the request on what they want to buy. It might go for some sort of approval from their manager or whatever the case might be. And once approved, PO is issued and it's in good books. It's as simple as that. If you'd like to see how Procure test can help with implementing a process like that, click on the link below and talk to one of our product specialists and they'll take it from there. Thanks me for joining today and I'll see you in the next video.
