Preparing an invoice export for a spend review

Most delays in our work are not analytic. They are postal, in the old sense: the file has not arrived, or it arrived without dates.

Columns that save a week

If you can export, include at least: document date, posting date, vendor name, tax number, amount, currency, cost centre or department, document number, and a description. Credit notes should stay in the same table with a sign that an accountant would recognise. If your package stores purchase orders and invoices apart, send both and tell us how they join.

A chart of accounts, even a messy one, belongs in the pack. So does a contract register if you keep one. We would rather see an imperfect register than discover frameworks by accident.

When the year lives on paper

Say so at the first call. We will quote for days in your filing room, not pretend a scan will appear. A sample month, photographed in order, still helps us see whether descriptions exist.

What not to send

Payroll. Medical diagnoses. Student rolls. Passport scans that someone stapled to a vendor file. If a line is classified, remove it; we will not be the people who hold it. Personal email inboxes forwarded as “the procurement folder” are not an export.

Send the pack, or the warning that it cannot leave the building, when you write to the studio. The method page shows what happens after it arrives.