Guides

The five guides

• Who approves a supplier payment, and who makes it: the rule everything else rests on, and why it matters long before there is a finance department
• Common mistakes in paying suppliers: five that recur, which comparison catches each, and what no check will ever catch
• What to do when a supplier invoice is wrong: why not to delete it, why not to quietly part-pay, and how to know the money really came back
• What to agree with a new supplier before the first order: four things, one of which almost nobody settles in advance
• How to move off a spreadsheet without stopping the business: an order of migration that starts with one supplier, and when not to move at all

That order is a suggestion rather than a sequence. Each guide stands on its own, and the first is first because it explains the idea the other four assume.

Where to start, by what is happening now

• If you work alone and it still feels like it works: when to move and when not to
• If you have just found a double payment or an odd charge: which check would have caught it
• If there is an invoice on the desk and you are not sure what to do with it: a credit note or a reissue
• If you are opening a new supplier this week: what to agree before the first order

And if you are not sure which of the four you are, the first one explains the idea the rest assume.

Who they are for

A business owner who buys from suppliers regularly, and whoever works alongside them: a procurement manager, whoever receives the goods, an external accountant. They assume you know how your business works, and assume no knowledge of systems at all.

They were written from the same point of view the product was built from, and you can read who is behind them. That is relevant here because a guide about money is worth exactly as much as the experience it was written from.

What they are not

They are not product documentation. Anyone looking for what the system does will find it on the procurement software page, and each guide links to the product page that belongs to it.

And they are not legal or tax advice. Withholding-tax certificates, registration status and credit terms are a real part of working with suppliers, and they depend on the circumstances of the business and on advice that does not belong on a page like this. A guide that pretends to cover them is worse than one that says it does not.