Covid nonprofit uses ProcurementExpress.com to safely spend €1.4m and remain audit compliant.

ProcurementExpress.com allowed Feed the Heroes to manage expenditure of over €1.4m on meals for frontline workers fighting Covid-19. It enabled us to be transparent and maintain proper purchasing controls to ensure our vendors and team members were aligned and our funding was managed effectively and transparently. ProcurementExpress.com saved us countless hours attempting to manage documents and ensure sign-off was achieved. It allowed us to be nimble, responsive and increased our effectiveness as a charitable project. We want to thank everyone at ProcurementExpress.com for responding to this project so quickly. At a time of national crisis we were delighted to be supported by the team and their drive to do something for frontline workers.

Cian O Flaherty – Co-Founder at Feed The Heroes

Feed The Heroes is a nonprofit project that raised money to help sustain overstretched frontline workers in Ireland – by ensuring they get at least one nutritious meal on every shift they work during the Covid-19 pandemic.

What started as a simple idea quickly grew into a national movement. In the 6 months between March and September 2020, Feed the Heroes raised over €1.4m in donations and delivered 200,000 meals across Ireland to hospitals, testing centres, laboratories and contact tracers.

Why did Feed The Heroes decide to use ProcurementExpress.com?

At the very outset of this nonprofit project the team at Feed The Heroes used spreadsheets to track and control their purchasing.

When donations skyrocketed they quickly realized that a secure system that automates and records every single step in the purchasing cycle would be needed to accurately control expenditure and maintain full transparency for all stakeholders.

How was ProcurementExpress.com a game changer for Feed The Heroes?

The Feed The Heroes team were operating in a fast-moving and ever-changing environment and couldn’t afford to waste time chasing paperwork or worrying about spend control and compliance.

ProcurementExpress.com simplified the nonprofit’s procurement processes allowing the hands-on volunteers to focus on the operational tasks that really mattered, without having to spend excessive amounts of time seeking
purchase approval or logging and recording expenditure.

Throughout this busy project volunteers could track and control their purchasing while on the move and away from their computers thanks to the ProcurementExpress.com mobile app. One click of a button was all that was ever required from management to approve or reject a purchase request.

How did ProcurementExpress.com help when it came to expense reporting and accounting?

When the project came to an end, Feed the Heroes still had an obligation to prepare and file annual accounts.

The team could track every single historic purchase in a matter of seconds by exporting a project expenditure report directly from ProcurementExpress.com at the end of their accounting period.

Documents such as invoices and receipts that were attached to specific purchase orders could also be inspected and checked as needed during this process. This eliminated the need for the team to search through emails or stacks of paperwork when preparing the accounts months after the project was wound down.

During the course of this project the Feed The Heroes team made a significant number of purchases and they can confidently stand over every single one of them!

What can we learn from this story?

Many finance teams find it difficult to control their spend. Here are some of the key issues that finance teams in non profit organizations face every day:

  • Funds are often wasted: Up to 20% of non profit income is wasted due to irresponsible spending errors and fraud.
  • The need for audit compliance in non profit organizations: Finance teams need hard data that covers them in the event of a financial discrepancy/purchasing error.
  • Time is wasted managing multiple spreadsheets: Purchase orders and invoices go missing or get lost in a web of emails and spreadsheets.

How a furniture and appliances retailer in Pretoria saves R250k every year

“ProcurementExpress.com saved us R250k last year”
Howard Shankman – CEO at Railway Furnishers

Railway Furnishers is an established furniture and appliances retailer with a centralized warehouse in Pretoria. Founded in the 1960’s, this family business now has 28 busy retail stores and over 350 employees.

With more and more stores opening, it became difficult for management to control costs and keep track of supplies on hand. Railway Furnishers needed to centralize their purchasing controls and better manage their outgoings.

THE CHALLENGE
Before using ProcurementExpress.com, Railway Furnishers were struggling with a number of issues:

  • Management were finding it increasingly difficult to control spending across the 28 retail stores. They were spending 10 hours a week simply chasing paperwork and matching purchases to individual retail stores.
  • Stationary and consumables were being purchased at inflated retail prices by store managers. This decentralized purchasing process was clearly inefficient and costly.
  • By failing to put adequate controls in place, management could see that they were encouraging a culture of wasteful spending. The risk of embezzlement was high.

Railway Furnishers needed a tool that would make purchasing safer and more efficient.

ISSUES IDENTIFIED IN AN AUDIT BY PROCUREMENTEXPRESS.COM

  • There was no automated purchasing process is place
  • Paper purchases were impossible to track
  • Month to month spending across each store was wildly fluctuating
  • The finance team were chasing receipts from 28 stores every month
  • Employees were not thinking twice before making a purchase
  • Supplies would go missing from time to time
  • Management had no ability to analyze and report on spend patterns
  • Management had no ability to establish key vendors relationships
  • Financial statements were not always adding up

THE SOLUTION

It made most sense for Railway Furnishers to choose a cloud-based centralized purchase approval solution. The roll-out went as planned and within days staff at Railway Furnishers were enjoying the safety and efficiency that ProcurementExpress.com offers.

Management saw the value of the real-time purchasing dashboard right away. It made reporting easy and slashed administration costs by 90% in the first month. ProcurementExpress.com also enabled management to partner exclusively with reliable trade suppliers that were willing to offer rebates in return for access to their bulk purchasing.

With the help of ProcurementExpress.com, store managers can now raise purchase requests for essential items directly with head office. Stores are now ordering supplies on a once a month basis and are aware that consumable usage is monitored.

THE RESULT

Improved efficiency: Railway Furnishers is now in full control of their outgoings and staff. Store managers no longer need to leave their store to purchase essential items and the finance team no longer spend hours every week scanning expense reports or searching for paper receipts.

Staff accountability: The culture of wasteful spend has been reversed and all staff now know that they are accountable for what they request. The risk of embezzlement and pilferage is now much lower.

Supplier accountability: Management use ProcurementExpress.com as a spend comparison tool. It allows them to gather purchase order data from across all of their 28 stores with ease and share this benchmarking data with suppliers on a regular basis to keep them on their toes.

Significant Savings: Railway Furnishers have made huge time and cost savings thanks to the platform. Time spent on purchasing has been reduced by 90% and in 2019 the app directly saved them over R250k.