Sachin Sharma, founder of ProcureDesk, shares five reports controllers should review weekly before month-end: unmatched invoices, unapproved purchase orders, invoices without POs, invoice aging, and budget versus actual. Running these reports weekly instead of waiting until month-end catches compliance issues early and improves cash-flow forecasting.
I recently spoke to around 47 controllers at growing companies and a common theme was towards the month end they are all hunting for missing items, whether it's missing proceeds, missing invoices, unapproved invoices and so on. If that's your reality, then this video is for you. Because in this video I'm going to break down five reports you must look at to ensure that your month end process goes smooth and you are able to close books faster. So let's jump in if you're joining me for the first time. Welcome. My name is Sachin Sharma. I am the founder of procuredesk where we help growing companies automate their controls around procurement and ap. So number one is unmatched invoices report. So unmatched invoices means any invoice that has not matched a purchase order or a receipt. It could be that the receipt is missing or it could be that the invoice pricing is different than what is on the purchase order. But it helps you to understand how many invoices you really need to work on and get them approved. And you should look at, I would say every week rather than wait for the month end so that you can get those exceptions resolved before the month end starts. So that's number one. Number two is unapproved purchase orders. It happens a lot that you have a purchase order that is in the approval process, it has the date of that month but it does not get approved till 1st or 2nd of the month. So you might want to look at as from a cash flow planning standpoint, even though it doesn't hit the books, it helps you to understand is how much purchase orders would be issued this month or maybe that's a last minute purchase that needs to happen but it hasn't been approved. So a good strategy would be to make sure that by the end of the month everything that is in the queue for review and approval is done even on the purchase order site. So you know what to kind of accrue for or build a cash flow report on. Right. So that's number two. Number three is invoices without purchase orders. So even though I think many companies try to have a compliance of 80, 90% where you always have a purchase order with invoicing the non peer invoices or invoices without purchase order is the reality of many companies. Whether it is people are in the field and calling the vendors directly or there was a last minute purchase and you just purchase the product and now you have an invoice, you need to track that Right. And the reason for that is, number one is you now need to figure out who approved it or who should have approved it. What is this purchase for? So you're kind of playing detective and you want to keep track of how many non peer invoices you have so you can figure out the right approval strategy and get them approved on time. Again, look at it on a weekly basis. Don't wait for the month. Number four is invoice aging report. So this helps you to kind of understand what is the cash flow requirements. Make sure that you can also identify opportunities for increasing the payment terms. Right. So a lot of times, you know, you see that you're probably spending hundreds and thousands of dollars on credit cards and you only have net 30 terms. This probably will give you an idea and said maybe we could reach out to the vendor, have better terms with the vendor, let's say net 45 or net 60 and improve your cash flow. As an example, or for that matter how much money you need at the end of the month to pay the vendors. As an example. So that's number four. Number five is budget versus actual. So this report is a must have for every controller to make sure you're avoiding any surprise expenses. Whether you are a construction company and you're dealing with job costing or you are a school that is dealing with the budget for the teachers or the grants and so on, this report is super helpful because it helps you to understand where you are trending and avoid any, I would say spending surprises, right. Where people go over budget and things like that. Now if you have a system that proactively does that, this probably becomes less important. But if you do not have a system that proactively track your budget and stop people from going over budget, this report is a must have. So if you are dealing with or you're dealing with the last minute month and chase, look at these five reports to ensure that you can close books on time. Number one is unmatched invoices. Number two is unapproved purchase orders. Number three is invoices without pos. Number four is invoice aging report. And number five is budget versus actual. If you want to see how a procurement system can help you run these reports more efficiently and pretty much automate this for you, click on the link below to talk to a product specialist and we can walk you through how procurators might be able to help you. Thanks for joining me today and I'll see you in the next video.
