NHSBT Purchase to Pay
Improvement Plan
NHSBT Finance Operations
Team
Improvement Plan Purchase to Pay
No.
Area of Improvement
1Move accountability and responsibility to budget Holder/Manager and make procurement/Finance role about a) training,
b) advice and c) some exception checking - not managing end to end process.
2Encourage most spend via STOCK route or CATALOGUE - minimise ADHOC spend
3Consider removing Procurement from the Po approval process except high value adhoc £40k.
4Ojeu spend procurement input as required. Less input on smaller spend frees time for high value high risk.
5Strategy set for usage on Government Procurement Card with authorisation by line managers and periodic exception
reporting review by procurement
6Management Information readily available and automated where possible on:
-Purchase order and No PO volumes.
- invoice queries by requisitioner/budget holder
- invoices paid days and invoice date to system date.
- manual pay routes
-MI by team member.
7Reduce volumes of invoices without a Purchase Order. Aim for 95% + PO or other preapproved payment methods.
Obtain MI and tackle top 10 suppliers by NO Po then next 10 until achieve the target. Consider alternative approach to
payment for spent type - e.g. rent and donor sessions.
8Aim for 95% + of invoices to be paid without query/hold or delay. Queries are generated by receipts not being entered
for goods, price or order quantity mismatch etc. Obtain information to understand where the holds are occurring, why
and set improvement targets until 95%+ is achieved.
9Invoices scanned – No Po invoices start electronic approval. All invoices easily viewed by all- reduce need to access
paper copies and filing space needed. (also see 15 increase electronic capture of invoice)
Improvement Plan Purchase to Pay
No.
Area of Improvement
10Delays in correct invoices arriving in Accounts Payable. All invoices received into AP first - no delivery to external
to AP unless with prior approval. All invoices right first time - supplier education/rejection letter
11Reduce/eliminate manual payment - examine and change to system payment route.
12Oracle Upgrade/reimplementation explore advantages and disadvantages. Explore the impacts of future
upgrades on how to implement change now.
13Customer Service/training/advice meets customers expectation and enables them to buy and pay for things first
time without issues. Customer survey to identify key issues for customers, address these in improved training
and via regular communication and feedback to customers on plan
14GRNI balances have historically been high and take finance resource to manage/clear down. Ensure that errors
made in receipting are fed back to users and explained to enable continuous improvement.
15Increase electronic invoicing (reduce post opening, post delay and input time). Aim for EDI uploads from all large
sized suppliers and other electronic upload forms/ OCR for all other suppliers.
16Reduce cheques paid out review payments made and consider how to move to other payment routes.
17Integrate processes for system set up and for system removal of leavers across all finance systems (and
eventually all NHSBT systems)
18Consider the value of reducing volumes of invoices in the interim where possible.