Ready or Not - Fiscal Year End is Approaching

It’s the most stressful time of year for public entities - fiscal year-end is approaching! Departments with remaining budgetary dollars or grants and other federal funds that require the solicitation process to be completed by the end of a budgetary cycle are anxious to spend it. As a result, purchasing takes a higher priority for the entire organization, with procurement professionals making it happen!

Quicker Purchasing

Under certain threshold amounts, procurement is only required to reach out for 3 quick quotes and then choose the most advantageous offer. Doing this by phone and email can take a lot of time, when there is little time left to get it done. An automated system that reaches out to suppliers, sends reminder notices, and obtains the quotes with an email automatically sent to all interested parties significantly speeds up this process. 

For more significant procurements, a well-stocked eprocurement system can provide access to thousands of procurements conducted by other agencies allowing you to search by multiple criteria, including piggy-backable clauses. Why reinvent the wheel? Take advantage of the work performed by others to help lighten the load during year-end. 

Year-End Reports

Whether it’s reporting of all products purchased that meet sustainability goals, minority or disadvantaged business participation, or dollars spent per division, procurement can be heavily involved in producing reports at the end of the fiscal year. These reports also help establish the proposed budgets for the following year. While an entity’s leadership might enact social goals, it often falls to procurement to enact policies to meet the goals and then report on the progress toward meeting them.

Prepare to Encumber

Government practices often require a need to be identified, then the commodity or service purchased, delivered, and paid for – all within the same fiscal year. However, that may not be the case this year as many suppliers face manufacturing and delivery delays, with shortages in stocked inventory. Orders may be placed; however not be delivered until next spring. As a result, procurement teams must further coordinate with the Auditor’s office and management teams. Creating lists of all items that can be purchased during this fiscal year but won’t be delivered and paid for until next year means encumbering funds may be a larger task this year. 

Inflation with Pricing Increases

Manufacturers are dealing with substantial price increases for input materials — from aluminum, paper, petroleum to wooden pallets — in addition to rising labor costs. For most commodities, suppliers are unable to provide the same pricing as originally proposed. Procurement teams are increasingly receiving price adjustment requests which impact the spending budgets of customer departments. On behalf of their customers, procurement often monitors the bottom line more closely to ensure last-minute purchases do not cause over-budget purchases.

Coordination of Multiple Demands

Many of these activities require procurement teams to work across the silos of their organization – customer departments, Auditor and Finance, and management teams. The best coordination is conducted through an eProcurement system that is easy and intuitive to use, produces as-needed reports, and feeds data to the organization’s existing financial systems while protecting data from intrusion. Anything less, and procurement teams must resort to handwritten notes, spreadsheets, and manual tracking processes.

PlanetBids offers a proven online solution successfully used by public procurement teams across the nation. Don’t let another fiscal year end without having an eProcurement system to manage the many moving parts of year-end responsibilities. Schedule a demo here (Select a Date & Time - Calendly) to incorporate into your budget in the new fiscal year.