Burdens Ad-Hoc Customer Portal – Unison Online
Through customer feedback and experience in the industry, it was clear many hours were spent chasing Burdens depots for Invoices, Statements or Product Spend Analysis. All of this information was held in our back office, so 'why don’t we make this available to the customer?' we thought. And so, we did; Unison Online was born and is now an essential part of many customers’ accounts department, used to locate:
- PODS
- Statements
- Invoices
- Product spend that can be broken down by Burdens depot, product type and product category
Purchase Cards or P-Cards
Issued to employees to make purchases on behalf of their company. The company guarantees the card and pays the administration costs. Comprehensive management reporting is possible with purchasing cards because the card issuer produces a detailed statement. This electronic invoice can be used to detail, reconcile and report on transactions and is also acceptable to HM Customs and Excise for VAT reclamation purposes.
Burdens have this facility available within a number of their UK depots to enable customers who issue P-Cards to their employees the freedom of buying goods quickly and efficiently. Having this system in place allows payment to be made and processed within 2-5 days as opposed to the former 30/60 day payment terms.
Burdens can also send one invoice per month detailing all of the P-Card transactions; this is of course sent electronically and groups all of the month’s transactions into one easy to read Bill?
E-Catalogue
A favoured way for customers to place orders effectively and efficiently is by using an E-Catalogue.
Having the supplier’s product range with agreed prices available at the touch of a button certainly beats looking through a product catalogue manually. Simply ticking a box next to the product you wish to order couldn’t be easier, and electronically processing this order via EDI means it will be sent and received in no time at all. It also eliminates the chance of human error - entering the wrong code or measurement will never happen as the catalogue can be maintained by the supplier. Burdens operate on this level with many large contractors and it has worked very effectively:
- A customer places an order via the catalogue.
- The order gets sent over electronically and loaded into Burdens Back Office as a Sales Enquiry.
- The relevant depot will then get notified via an email that an order has been placed.
- They can then check this and convert into a Sales Order which would then throw back an Acknowledgment to confirm order and advise of delivery date.
- The invoice could then be sent through in the same manner which would match the Order automatically on Order Number, Quantity and Price.
