The App - How Using it can Help Save Time

Accurate recording of goods received is one function often missed by staff. Although not always evident, it can have a significant negative impact across the surgery resulting in staff frustrations, time losses, and in fact higher costs.

For example:

We often receive support calls from staff looking for missing orders when quite often they have been received into the surgery and stored away without anyone realising. This results in frustrations as staff go looking for items, make calls to suppliers (or Support Manager) for missing stock, and in worse case situations, reorder the goods at an unnecessary additional cost.

The app can help avoid this problem as it is very easy to quickly record goods received. This means others can reliably view outstanding orders to see if an item has been received, and as the app can identify a designated storage location, items can be correctly stored and quickly located by staff when needed.

Another problem occurs when an item is received that is not in fact what has been ordered. A supplier may substitute one product for another if they are out of stock. This again can cause frustration as staff are expecting a particular brand, make or size. And the problem becomes compounded if the item is invoiced at a higher cost than what was ordered.

The app can be used to check the accuracy of the goods being unpacked and action taken right away to correct the issue. In fact it is also possible for the reception team to use the app to quickly check that a purchase order has been issued and can be accepted. They wouldn’t need to check the contents, just that the delivery is valid. Once a delivery is accepted it can take a lot of time to return as well as deal with the attempted invoice charge.

There are a few companies delivering goods to surgeries in the knowledge that they use that particular product, that staff won’t realise the item was never ordered from them and then invoice the item(s) charging as much as four times the normal cost. One example has been printer cartridges, after a quick call to the receptionist to verify their printer model. We know of a number of surgeries where this problem occurred and at great cost to the surgery.

In examples two and three above, the reception team can be given a float smart phone or tablet (only WIFI enabled) to check that the delivery should be accepted.

Invoices are received for goods that were never received and the finance team has to spend time trying to verify the goods were actually received. Sometimes they simply pay the invoice assuming all is in order. Again we are aware of a few surgeries which incurred many thousands in fraudulent costs. 

This is a common complaint of finance staff and we regularly hear about the frustrations and time loss they experience in trying to verify supplier invoices.

With the app recording the delivery status, including quantity received, the finance team can easily see in the My Purchase History report the status of all purchase orders including back orders, avoid wasting time trying to track down the status of goods ordered and avoid double paying an invoice, or paying for items not yet received.

Accurate financial information is very important for effective management of the surgery. It allows for an accurate understanding of how well the surgery is operating in comparison to previous periods and other surgeries, highlights good performance and where opportunities may exist for fine tuning operations including purchases. It is also important for verifying prescription reimbursements and the FP34 if the advanced NHS Reimbursements module is being used.