How to Stop Chasing Purchasing Information in Finance

A supplier invoice arrives. The amount looks reasonable, but there is no purchase order reference. Finance cannot tell which site placed the order, who agreed the price or whether everything was delivered.

So someone sends an email.

The reply points them towards another colleague. That colleague is out on site. Meanwhile, the invoice sits unresolved and the supplier wants to know when they will be paid.

If this sounds familiar, you will know how much work can hide behind one apparently straightforward invoice.

Finance needs enough information to check the bill, allocate the cost and arrange approval. When those details have not been recorded or passed on, the team has to reconstruct the purchase after it has happened.

The invoice arrives. The explanation does not.

An invoice tells finance what a supplier is charging. It does not necessarily explain why the purchase was made, whether it was authorised or whether the goods or services were received.

To process it confidently, finance may need answers to questions such as:

• Who placed the order?

• What price and quantity were agreed?

• Which department, site or project should carry the cost?

• Who authorised the purchase?

• Were the goods delivered or the services completed?

• Is there a discrepancy that needs resolving?

The answers may exist somewhere. The agreed price is in an email. The delivery note is at a branch. A project manager knows which budget should pay.

But knowing that information exists is different from being able to access it.

Why finance ends up chasing

Purchasing happens across the business

Different teams need to buy things to get their work done. A site manager orders materials, an office manager replaces equipment and a department head commissions a service.

That becomes difficult for finance when each team records purchases differently. Some use purchase orders. Others rely on emails, spreadsheets or verbal agreements.

By the time the invoice arrives, finance has several ways to investigate the purchase and no consistent starting point.

Responsibility is unclear

Who confirms that a delivery arrived? Who follows up a price discrepancy? Who answers finance when the person who ordered is away?

If nobody owns these steps, an invoice can move between people without getting closer to resolution. Each person knows part of the story, but finance still needs the complete picture.

Changes are agreed without updating the record

An order may be clear at the start, then change.

A supplier delivers only part of it. Someone agrees an additional charge. Materials are redirected to another project.

If the purchasing record still shows the original agreement, finance has to establish whether the invoice is wrong or the record is out of date.

Information is collected too late

Sometimes the first request for a project code, approval or delivery confirmation comes when finance receives the invoice.

At that point, colleagues may struggle to remember the details. Emails need finding, documents need retrieving and decisions need explaining again.

Information that would have taken moments to record at the time becomes a longer investigation.

What does the chasing cost?

The immediate cost is time. There is also the interruption for everyone asked to help.

As an illustration, suppose finance spends an average of ten minutes resolving missing information on 30 invoices each week. That adds up to five hours of chasing a week, before counting colleagues’ time.

This is an example, not an industry benchmark. Your own figures may be different, but even a small sample can reveal how much work is involved.

The consequences extend beyond the time spent:

At month-end, unresolved purchases can also make it harder to establish which costs belong in the period and what may need accruing.

Suppliers experience the delay too. They may have supplied everything correctly, yet still need to chase payment because the customer’s internal information is incomplete.

How to reduce the gaps

Agree what needs recording when a purchase is made

Start with the details finance repeatedly asks for. Typically, these include the supplier, the person ordering, the expected cost, the relevant budget or project, and the required authorisation.

Make the process proportionate to the purchase. A routine office order and a substantial project commitment may need different controls, but both need an understandable record.

Put responsibility with the person closest to the information

The person receiving goods is usually best placed to confirm what arrived. The person commissioning a service should confirm whether the work was completed. The buyer should record changes agreed with the supplier.

Give each step a clear owner so finance knows where to direct genuine exceptions.

Keep the purchasing record current and accessible

Connect the order, authorisation, delivery confirmation and subsequent changes so they can be found together.

Software can support this, but the process still needs people to record the right details at the right time. An incomplete record remains incomplete wherever it is stored.

Start with the question finance asks most often

Review a small sample of invoices that needed chasing. Record what was missing, who supplied it and where that information should have been captured.

If the same question appears repeatedly, you have a useful starting point for improving the process.

For example, repeated delivery queries suggest a gap in how receipt is confirmed. Frequent project-code queries suggest that cost allocation needs to happen earlier.

Fixing those recurring gaps gives finance more time to resolve genuine exceptions and helps colleagues avoid answering the same questions again.

For a practical next step, read our purchase order tracking guide, which explains how to keep an order visible through approval, delivery and invoicing.