I certainly hope you aren't paying these surcharges if the supporting information isn't present. When and by whom, are these charges being detected?
It is important to remember that a purchase order is a contractual obligation and any changes should be duly annotated. Have you looked at all the associated paperwork to determine if the information has not be forwarded about surcharges and overlooked, or perhaps somebody forgot to forward the appropriate documentation? Stranger things have happened.
I had one instance where a supplier wanted to charge me for the cost of express shipping because they were running late on an order. I didn't request it, so I wasn't paying for that service. I told the supplier that if it is something I request, I will be more than happy to pay for that service.
The resolution of this issue is something that both the accounting and purchasing departments should work on together. What type of system/s are you using in the business for accounting and purchasing functions?
Wayne
Wayne,
Thanks for your reply. I feel that I was a little too brief in my post earlier and would like to detail some pertinent information regarding the process.
As of right now, we are processing the surcharges without any real checking mechanisms in place. Our suppliers submit the surcharges in addition to their invoices (for the most part atleast) and typically these surcharges get processed through by accounting. Purchasing is, however, informed via email about any surcharges that are added to the invoices. Some suppliers may even add the surcharges implicitly in the invoice w/o naming them as surcharges.
So far, I have established a process flow to track any and all surcharges that are issued to us. We have established a Surcharge Team - with Purchasing, Acctg and Pricing/Marketing personnel to do a monthly review of the surcharges and reject all non-relevant, incomplete, unsubstantiated surcharges.
I am looking to create a division wide spreadsheet that will require our suppliers to submit all surcharges in a given period(1 month) through the spreadsheet. We would also like to process the appropriate surcharges to the pricing department so that the actual increases in the cost of RM can be added in to our product pricing (albeit through annual increases).
We use a legacy system for the entire corporation (its in the fortune 300 list). The system is kind of archaic and does not allow for many innovations that current SAP/Oracle/BoB systems can provide. (hence the manual intervention

)
I am fairly confident in the process flow being designed to properly track and control the surcharges (will have it for review once approved). However, would really appreciate some templates/tools that other companies are using for this function.
Thanks again,
Aj