Stop doing extra work and get a big thumbs-up from engineers

by cfohelp

Did you know some of your accounting staff spend almost a month of their year wasting time?

If your company is still requiring engineers to requisition samples while designing products or process improvements then you are spending too much time on non-value added work, inhibiting innovation, and generally ticking people off.  Bite the bullet and give the engineers p-cards so they can quickly order things on the internet, get them, test them, and make a go no-go decision.  If it’s a no-go you’ve saved the work of qualifying and adding a vendor who will never be used, or adding items to your procurement system that will never be used.  You can trust the engineers to make good decisions.  Take a leap of faith CFOs!   Regarding controls, set up a protocol for receiving items (usually UPS or Fedex) that includes delivery to the department, review of MSDS, and proper sign-off.  Your banker will supply you an upload file for your journal entry so the charges are populated to the proper accounts and departments.   If there is material abuse, it will show up in those budget to actuals your staff will now have time to analyze.