Who should receive the bills from suppliers and vendors, account payable or procurement?

[Mohashamoon]

Hello Everyone,

In my company, the procurement team receives the bills from suppliers and vendors then pass it to our accounting team to prepare the payment cheques (we only pay in cheques), then the accounting team will inform the procurement team that the payment is ready, then the procurement team will call the suppliers and vendors to come to our head office to get the cheques.

Is this process normal?

Some other people say that the accounting payable should receive the bills directly and do all the validation and communication with vendors. What do you think?

Regards,
Mohamed Shamoon

 

[John Broomfield]

Verifying receipt of conforming product (and services) before payment makes a lot of sense.

Having suppliers come to the office to collect their cheques seems very costly in this era of electronic payment.

 

[Ninja]

As long as:
- what was ordered
- what showed up and
- what was billed
all match, it really doesn't matter who does the matching...

For us, we did it in account payable who had copies of the receiving report and the PO as well as the bill...it could have as easily been the receiver or the procurement group.

Agree on the electronic payments...or at least mail checks. Having the vendors come to collect the checks seems odd to me, never heard of such a thing.

 

[normzone]

Everybody does it differently, depending on who has the most resources and what tools are available to match up data as per [Ninja]'s post above.

Suppliers dropping in to pick up a check might not be out of the ordinary if they are in the area every day, and the electronic systems to obsolete such practice are not in place yet.

 

[Randy]

Doesn't matter, it's an internal organization decision, so do what's most effective as you decide.