In this solo presentation, Sachin Sharma, founder of ProcureDesk, addresses how manual purchase order (PO) and invoice approval processes erode cash‑flow visibility for growing companies. Targeting controllers and CFOs, he outlines three root causes: (1) the "email black hole" where invoices sit unread in inboxes, obscuring approval status; (2) the "traveling approver" problem where decision‑makers are away from desks and cannot approve promptly; and (3) poor field‑to‑PO synchronization, where manual PO creation delays material delivery and stalls field crews. For each issue, Sharma proposes a concrete fix: implement an AP system that tracks invoice status, deploy a mobile app for on‑the‑go approvals, and automate PO generation to eliminate manual hand‑offs. He concludes with a call‑to‑action, inviting viewers to schedule a demo with a product specialist to see how ProcureDesk can automate these processes and restore cash‑flow visibility.
Chapters
If you have a manual purchase order or invoice approval process, then it's killing your cash flow visibility. Here's probably what's happening in your company. You probably have a lot of invoices. You don't know what is the status of each one of them. It's probably stuck in somebody's inbox for approval. Your vendors are calling, you're paying them late or critical. Vendors are not shipping products and so on. And that's not your fault because their systems are not scaling with the growth of the company. If you're a controller or a CFO and you resonate with this, this video is for you because I'm going to break down three things that is causing these poor cash flow visibility and how to go about fixing them. 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 procurement and AP processes. So let's dig in. Number one is avoid the email black hole, right? So we all kind of start with this process. Invoice comes in, needs approval, email it to somebody, it sits in somebody's inbox. You have no visibility in terms of whether they have looked at it, they have a question because they haven't approved it, or they just haven't simply looked at it. So you're always chasing people to get invoices approved and that causes bad cash flow visibility, right? Because you don't know how many invoices are really approved and what you need to kind of pay this month, next month and so on. So a simple fix for that is have a system where you can track the status of the invoices, whether it is a, you develop something like in your SharePoint or something like that, or you use a AP system like Procure Desk. It gives you the visibility to understand, all right, these are the invoices that are in queue for approval. These are the invoices where people have asked questions, needs clarification, and these are already approved. So, so you know whom to reach out and get the invoices approved fast. That's number one. Number two is traveling approver, right? So everybody is not sitting in front of a computer like the way I'm doing right now and approving invoices. They are in the field. If you're a construction company, you're a busy executive, you're on the road and so on. And if you are the one holding up the approval, you really don't have time to kind of go, you know, Dig up those approvals from your email and respond and so on. So, so a simple fix for this problem is to have a system which allows approvals from your phone. Everybody has their phone in their hand all the time. With a mobile app you can easily approve on the go. So there's no, I would say time downtime from an approval standpoint. Number three is field time sync. So what do I mean by that? We see this in growing companies where they realize they need a purchase order system and their purchase order system becomes send an email to ap. AP team will enter the purchase order in the accounting system like QuickBooks, send you the PO number back and so on, and then you can order and work with the vendor to order. The problem with this approach is it works theoretically, but it is causing a lot more issues than you think. Right? So number one is pos are not getting created on time. People try to kind of go avoid the process, right? They'll find workaround and say oh geezer was an emergency purchase because the process is so long. And number three is the worst impact of this is if you have, let's say field crew and they are waiting for a PO number because they need the material. Now they're just sitting idle. So that's lost productivity for the whole team, right? These are the things, you know, where you're not probably thinking about second level consequences, but that's what it costs you, right? So if you are using manual approvals, then focus on solving for these three things. Number one is avoid this, you email black hole. Number two is have a system that has a mobile app so people can travel, approve while they're traveling. And number three is automate the process for purchase order creation so that your team doesn't have to manually handle those requests and create the purchase orders. If you are dealing with any of these problems we talked about today, click on the link below to schedule some time with one of our product specialists so they can walk you through how you could use a procurement system to automate a lot of these issues. Right. Or solve these problems. Thanks for joining me today and I'll see you in the next video.
