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Woolworths is making it compulsory for suppliers to provide its accounting department with an Electronic Data Interchange ( EDI ) invoice .
The scheme will cover 54 suppliers that receive orders directly from and deliver directly to stores. It will no longer be an acceptable excuse that a store made an order by fax or telephone rather than EDI -an EDI invoice will still be required .
In the Woolies project , which started in January and is due to finish in December 2004, suppliers have been encouraged to use a Freeway's Spectrum Pro software product. This enables them to use common accounting packages , such as Sage and Pegasus, to generate an EDI invoice.
Woolworths EDI invoice coordinator Fiona Banks said die hardest bit was, "Persuading seasonal suppliers to invest in integrated EDI ".The project had been going "very well ", said Banks, adding that the mountain of paper invoices had been considerably reduced. Of the 54 suppliers, fewer than 10 are still sending paper invoices, she explained
Banks said Woolworths will not refuse to pay paper invoices, but said: "Paper invoices are not processed so efficiently ". Suppliers for the program include Bristows of Devon, Hanaco, John Hinde and Universal Cycles .
The main advantage has been greater efficiency."By receiving the invoices electronically, the labour-intensive tasks of opening envelopes ,data entry, copying, filing and storage disappear, along with human error", explained Banks .
As a further bonus ,the system cost nothing for Woolworths to implement. Click here for downloadable versions of this and similar news stories from the press |
