ProActis Send Integration control
London Borough of Merton ProActis integration with Academy Housing

Aim: With the implementation of strict commitment accounting principals and centralisation of invoicing processing, Merton chose ProActis Spend control as the vehicle to deliver this goal to their Chief Executive. Any system spending money requires purchase orders to be authorised via ProActis. Merton use Academy housing software to manage the repairs performed on their housing stock. Purchase orders need to be raised in Academy and then passed to ProActis for authorisation. Work cannot start unless the relevant manager has authorised the spend against their budget.

Solution: Using triggers in the Ingres database that drives Academy, purchase orders are passed to ProActis though an XML Gateway. These orders are often subject to much variation before the work can be started so each variation of the orders need to be reflected in ProActis. The Academy order is held until such time as the budget manager authorises the spend. The notification of authorisation is then passed back to Academy. Invoices received from the contracts are scanned and stored in ProActis and matched with their original Purchase Orders. Where appropriate, Purchase Orders are raised in Academy and authorised in ProActis before being attached to the relevant invoice. Where necessary, the invoice can be flagged for post-work inspection but in most cases, when the invoice amount matches the order amounts contractor is automatically paid by the financial system.

Value added benefits: With superior Purchase Order delivery facilities available in ProActis, orders are now sent via fax, PDF or even XML depending on the contractors preference. The authorisation of the commitment to spend is performed at the start of the procurement process meaning that when an invoice is received matches orders payment to contractor is made immediately. This follows Central Government’s invoice turnaround requirements. At any given time a budget holder knows how much money is actually spent and how much is committed to being spent through the reports available from the Financial Reporting data warehouse.

EDI Processing
Budgens Stores in conjunction with SMS Services

Aim: Budgens stores use desktop EDI software to receive legacy TRADACOM messages from large volume suppliers such as bakeries. These invoices need to be delivered the appropriate system based on whether the store the delivery is made to is corporate of franchise. Budgens pays these invoices and passed them on to the franchise for repayment to Budgens

Solution: Automate the delivery of EDI invoices from the suppliers and deliver the document in the right format for presentation the relevant sub system based on user editable rules. Strict controls are required to ensure that all documents are presented and that when errors occurs the appreciate users is notified that action is required.

Value added benefits: The invoices from the suppliers are been recreated in a printable form and are held in a query-able document management system. This allows the periodical retrieval and electronic delivery invoices to a particular store, eliminating the need to keep paper copies and the processes are required to manage them.

Financial Reporting Data warehouse
London Borough of Merton In conjunction with UniServe consulting

Aim: Release the financial information trapped behind legacy software by making it available for reporting tools and management application

Solution: Create a data warehouse that is populated nightly from a UNIX Oracle database into the procurement reporting facility based on a Microsoft SQL Server. Functionality to retrieve the hierarchal account structure had to be written into T-SQL Functions so that business based information would be available to queries in conjunction with disparate system

Value added benefits: Automated the manual process required to convert the information from it’ source to be available to budget holders in a secure web based form. The data has been combined with information from procurement applications, allowing the user drill down from high level budget commitment reports to the original scanned imaged of the purchase order.