Purchase Order Tracking: How to Keep Track of POs Efficiently?

Manual purchase order processes are often a black hole. They suck in loads of paperwork, time, and money, and don’t let purchasing teams see the light of day. Projects get delayed and confusion increases, and no one really knows what happens on the other side.

Purchase orders remain a critical resource in an organization, and yet purchasing teams are continually forced to do more with less. They are expected to increase savings, streamline purchasing, and control spend with limited resources, all while dealing with a process that is often hard to explain. The best way forward is to stop feeding POs into the black hole of an inefficient process and find a wormhole-like bypass around it.

With a powerful purchase order tracking solution like Kissflow Procurement Cloud tracking purchase orders, businesses no longer have to worry about mixing up purchase orders or paying invoices with the wrong PO.

What is purchase order tracking? Why is it important?

Purchase order tracking also known as a PO tracking system is a software application used to view the real-time status of purchase orders. Implemented as cloud based software or on-premise, it allows the electronic handling of purchase orders for swift and simple PO processing.

It helps businesses manage the entire PO cycle, from creation to purchase order approval. These purchase order trackers offer the procurement team a way to weed out inefficiencies from purchase order processing.

Here are five reasons why a purchase order tracking system triumphs over traditional purchase order tracking:

• Saves time by automating purchase order creation, routing, and approval
• Offers a better way to store and access a pipeline of purchase orders
• Standardizes a process so that it doesn’t have to be reinvented every time
• Ensures compliance with policies, regulations, and contracts

• Gives you a head start on optimizing organizational spend with accuracy and consistency

Pain points of manual purchase order tracking

There are only a few feeble arguments to be made for handling a process the old-fashioned way: with paper forms, emails, and spreadsheets. The digital option is far superior–it brings in efficiency and unerring consistency.

Every last purchase request is approved or denied on time, and then used to initiate a purchase order. No purchase order is ever lost or executed poorly, just because someone missed an approval email notification or misplaced some PO data.

The pain points of the traditional purchase order process are displayed in the image below:

How to track purchase orders efficiently?

The purchase order process doesn’t have to be paper-intensive and repetitive anymore. With the help of technological products like purchase order tracking software, organizations can track all the elements of purchasing and payment with ease.

These PO tracking systems cut down the manual labor and paperwork associated with the process while improving accuracy and consistency throughout the entire PO cycle.

With efficient procurement cloud software like Kissflow, businesses no longer have to work about mixing up purchase orders or paying invoices with the wrong PO.

Organizations can stop sifting through overflowing email inboxes and spreadsheets to track purchase orders. Purchasers can obtain all the essential details like order date, vendor info, and even view original purchase requests with a single click.

Features to look for in a digital purchase order system

A digital procurement tool like Kissflow Procurement Cloud can transform the way you keep track of purchase orders. In addition to eliminating paperwork, reducing manual intervention and human errors, ensuring transparency, and lowering operational costs throughout the procure-to-pay cycle it improves accuracy, speeds up execution, and enhances process efficiency within the purchase order process as well.

These are some of the most important features a purchase order software must have.

Rapid PO Creation

Create purchase orders by auto populating data from purchase requisitions

Auto 3-way matching

Automatically match purchase orders with related invoices and requisitions before an invoice is approved

Real-time reporting

Spot bottlenecked POs and delays using actionable insights from visual-rich reports

Cloud-based storage

Store, access, and approve POs seamlessly with centralized storage

Role-based permissions

Maintain purchasing information securely with user-specific, conditional access controls

Automated notifications

Seek timely actions from the stakeholders by sending automated reminders

Real-Time Tracking

Track, approve, and monitor the status of any PO with a simple click

Kissflow: Better PO tracking, and so much more

Procurement professionals spend too much time fighting the effects of a process black hole with purchase orders. When allowed to use lightning-fast wormholes to get POs to where they need to be, procurement team members can use their business acumen and analytical skills to solve bigger problems.

Kissflow Procurement Cloud bridges this gap with a simple, elegant approach to PO tracking. In addition to POs, it can handle a number of crucial purchasing functions like purchase requisitions, vendor management, invoice approvals, and more.

Looking for a digital solution that puts you in control of POs? Take a look at Kissflow Procurement Cloud, and see how easy it is to manage the PO lifecycle.