How to Streamline Procurement and Reduce Compliance Headaches
Learn key areas to simplify K-12 purchasing and help teams manage limited budgets more effectively.
Whether they're buying pencils or PCs, K–12 schools of all shapes and sizes must adhere to complex patchworks of federal, state, and local purchasing regulations. Maintaining fiscal responsibility is a core element of the prudent management of government- and taxpayer-funded budgets. It's also essential to achieving and maintaining compliance with community goals that advance support for local businesses or reduce a district's carbon footprint. Ensuring ongoing compliance with strict regulations and bidding processes, or vetting prices for bigger ticket items through cooperative groups like OMNIA Partners, all takes time, and each step can draw out the purchasing process. Supplier and procurement solutions that recognize the critical importance of districts' fiscal responsibilities — while also streamlining end-to-end workflows — help districts improve efficiencies and gain more time back in their teams' day. Here are the key areas where compliance efficiencies may be gained, and how the right solution can help.
Look back to move forward
Not long ago, the 31 schools that make up, Shelby County Schools , one of Alabama's largest school districts, funneled all purchase requests using paper printouts or e-mails to their school's bookkeeper, who then recreated the requests as purchase orders (POs) and routed them to finance for approval — all before actually tracking compliance or ordering. Their ability to track budgets to ensure policy-compliant purchasing was limited and largely manual, relying on purchasers to provide the correct or necessary information. Shipping, approved payment types, or lines of credit and payment terms were disorganized, and varied from school to school.
Kings Canyon Unified School District (USD) in California similarly faced procurement and compliance challenges, a lot of which centered around its invoice approval processes and purchase reconciliations. The district relied on a payments platform that sent statements to the accounts payable team on a monthly basis, which required the team to tackle hundreds of purchase card reconciliations and approvals in bulk once a month.
Both districts sought to implement automated controls to ensure online purchases met school- or district-based spending guidelines. They also needed to streamline payment and reconciliation processes, and make sure those workflows stood up to audits and improved visibility — for example, with more granular data and analytics on spending by department and requisitioner.
Essentials for enforcement and compliance
Finance teams serving K–12 schools and districts can streamline workflows and processes through purchasing and procurement solutions customized to meet their specific requirements, with as few or as many guardrails to ensure appropriate visibility and control. Aspects that are most important to K–12 teams include:
Efficient policy enforcement: To reduce manual processes and limit opportunities for error, schools should opt for tools that automatically apply their district's or state's unique purchasing rules.
Streamlined approval processes: Given the rigid rules around order placement, features that allow schools or districts to advance quickly, but thoroughly, through their approval workflows are also essential. Reviewing those workflows in advance of their adoption within new tools will likely expose opportunities to optimize further.
Transparent pricing and bidding capabilities: All tools should provide clear pricing information as well as support formal bid processes for larger orders, according to state and local compliance regulations. (New York state's threshold is $20,000, for example.)
Accurate order tracking and three-way matching: Schools should opt for robust systems that can track deliveries and match purchase orders, invoices, and receipts to readily satisfy audit requirements.
Support for community and sustainability goals: Features that help schools and districts track their spending with local or diverse suppliers, as well as environmentally friendly options, are increasingly important.
Detailed reporting and analytics: To meet county or state accountability requirements, districts should require comprehensive data on all aspects of their procurement processes.
Where to turn for help
Shelby County Schools used Amazon Business to bring all of its 31 schools together under one purchasing and procurement umbrella, ensuring common pricing, procedures, and terms were enacted and followed district-wide. The new purchasing system more effectively monitors for purchasing compliance and allows purchasers to place and manage their own orders, taking advantage of business-only pricing while also using Pay by Invoice through the district's finance office. Finance now has a clear line of sight into spending and robust analytic capabilities with Amazon Business Analytics.
"The number one benefit for my finance team is being able to find more of what we need through Amazon Business. The bid process is simpler, the ordering process is familiar, and budgeting is easier," said John Gwin, the district's chief finance officer. "We're much better off."
At Kings Canyon USD, Amazon Business helped the district set up a Pay by Invoice option at checkout, simplifying auditing and reconciliation processes, and opening up access to consolidated invoicing and visibility into spending and budget tracking. Buyers must have approvals and all supporting documentation specified by the district's auditing policies prior to making a purchase, which they can gather easily by creating a cart and purchase order that routes to an approver before it's sent to accounts payable. Pay by Invoice also helped the district to shift to weekly invoice payments instead of monthly, and simplified processes around confirmation of receipt of goods.
"The biggest change that has saved us time is updating how frequently we pay our invoices — switching from receiving monthly invoices to receiving them weekly," said Janet Linscheid, an accounts payable team member at Kings Canyon USD. "Inputting them on a weekly basis has saved us a lot of time."
The district also takes advantage of 3-Way Match, which helps teams unite orders, receipts, and invoices, and reconcile purchases faster. "Previously, we were sending more than 50 e-mails at a time, trying to confirm receipt of merchandise. Now, we're saving days and even weeks tracking down orders," Linscheid said.