Save time and improve decision-making with streamlined Supplier Management

Building a professional finance function that supports your company’s setup and growth is no easy feat. But it’s possible if you have the right tools and systems in place.

Our Supplier Management feature allows you to simplify supplier information processes and provides your finance team with the resources they need to increase efficiency and eliminate redundant processes.

From invoice management to approvals that fit your company model, this powerful feature has everything you need for effective supplier data management.

Supplier management benefits

Get better visibility over expenses
Our Supplier Management feature lets businesses like yours get a comprehensive view of all of their expenses. You can easily track the amount of money spent on each supplier, identify which products you're purchasing, and analyse the prices you are paying.

This in-depth level of visibility empowers businesses to make informed decisions regarding spend controls and budgets and discover potential cost-saving opportunities. Plus, with enhanced visibility into your supplier information and expenses, companies can optimise their budgets and improve their overall financial performance.

Easy data entry processes to make payments faster

Processing payments to regular suppliers or vendors can be a hassle as we often need to reuse their contact and payment information. This results in repetitive manual input of data, causing delays and errors in the process.

For example, if you receive monthly bills from a supplier and the invoice lacks details such as contact and payment information, you would have to fill in the same information each time you make a payment. This repetition wastes time and results in inaccurate data entry. The Suppliers app allows you to store important information about any given supplier and allows you to reuse this information upon reviewing and paying your expenses.

Enjoy an additional layer of security

The streamlined nature of our tool, including our Supplier Management features, lets you cross-reference bank details on invoices with the saved supplier information. This enables early discrepancy detection and ensures you pay the correct suppliers.

Businesses can use the feature to implement effective measures to safeguard their financial resources, minimise risks, and maintain integrity in their payment transactions. The additional layer of security provided by the centralised nature of our Supplier Management feature offers peace of mind and builds trust between businesses and their suppliers.

How our Supplier Management features integrate with software systems

Within an ERP system

Supplier Management within an ERP system allows businesses to efficiently organise and group their suppliers based on specific criteria or categories. This feature provides a structured approach to supplier data management, as companies can gain better insights into their expenditure and exercise more control over their spending.

Within an expense management system

While not all expense management solutions provide this capability, Payhawk stands out by offering automatic synchronisation of supplier data with your existing ERP system. You can effortlessly edit, create, and delete suppliers by leveraging our platform. And any modifications you make within our software or your ERP system will sync automatically.

Build a professional finance function that works

As you establish your finance function, our Supplier Management feature will give you the power to streamline your processes in the following areas:

Creating Suppliers

To create suppliers, save time with automatic imports from your ERP or accounting system, manual upload via an xlsx template, or during an expense review.

Option 1: With a connected ERP or Accounting integration
With this option, you can automatically connect to your existing ERP system. This includes general details, such as VAT code and category, as well as additional custom fields required by your ERP.

By connecting to your ERP subsidiary, you will allow Payhawk to extract your supplier list from the ERP on a daily basis. In addition, our platform syncs your ERP with all supplier-related changes made through the Suppliers app in real time.

Option 2: With a manual upload
When using this option, you can import your supplier data to the Suppliers app via an xlsx template with two sheets. Just list all your suppliers and their data in the template, and all the data will be instantly available within the platform as you upload the xlsx.

Option 3: During Expense Review
Admins and Accountants can also create suppliers while reviewing employee expenses. If the employees assign the expense to a new supplier, they simply enter the supplier name and mark it as a "new supplier". This action triggers a prompt for an admin or accountant to create the new supplier and provide additional details, all while reviewing the expense. A convenient screen will pop up, allowing the administrator or accountant to add the new supplier's information seamlessly.

Editing Supplier data

Our system provides a streamlined process for editing and updating supplier data. Since the data from the ERP syncs with Payhawk each evening, it saves time by eliminating manual entry in our system. In addition, an audit log keeps track of any change made in supplier data and requires a note of explanation. This helps ensure compliance and reduces the risk of fraud. To access the audit log for each supplier, you can easily access it in the ‘detailed view’ found in the Supplier application.

Supplier expense categorisation

In addition to auto-populating supplier data , the Supplier Management app allows customers to pre-define ‘Expense Field’ values for each supplier.

Choosing a default value for expense fields per supplier means these fields will always be automatically pre-filled each time our OCR detects the respective supplier on an invoice or each time the user selects the respective supplier from the dropdown.

End master data pollution once and for all

Why is master data important?

Master data serves as a single source of truth and ensures that critical data is consistent and accurate across the entire company. When the master data is not managed effectively, this can lead to data pollution. Data pollution occurs when the company allows inaccurate, inconsistent, or conflicting data throughout an organisation's systems, processes, and reports.

Decrease manual data entry to enhance data quality

The bottom line is that manual data entry is a significant contributor to data pollution, which negatively impacts business outcomes. With the automated nature of our Suppliers App, you no longer have to worry about manually cleaning your master data in the external accounting system or ERP to avoid duplicates and errors, eventually leading to data pollution over time.

Budgeting and reporting

You can now choose which suppliers to track and which ones not to. For instance, if you decide to group your suppliers in the app and you have one of the suppliers named “Taxi” that you always select.

Regardless of which Taxi company that supplier’s receipt is from, you won’t end up with 20 duplicate “Taxi” companies as suppliers in your ERP. For enhanced accounting and bookkeeping, expenses are tied to the correct ‘Supplier’ or ‘Supplier Group’ from the start.

Exports and Developer APIs are now enhanced

Suppliers will now have an external ID for a 100% match in the external system. This enhancement simplifies data exchange, eliminates data mismatch risk, and ensures data integrity and accuracy during the export process. The goal is to simplify integrations with our platform for a more streamlined experience.

Easy-to-use supplier management solution that makes a difference

Our Supplier Management feature is an excellent solution for businesses looking to streamline their supplier data management processes. Providing easy access to supplier information greatly reduces the time spent on administrative tasks and improves accounting automation. And removing errors can help businesses save time, money, and resources.

Enhance your entire accounts payable and expense management processes with a powerful feature designed for easier supplier data management, increases efficiency, and eliminates time-sucking processes. Book a demo today to find out more.