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Like the good old days, only better

     In the old days, agencies used preprinted, multi-part purchase order forms that were completed by hand. Copies of the purchase order were faxed to the vendor, saved in the job jacket, and sent to the accounting department. When the vendor's invoice arrived, the accounting department matched the invoice's amount with the purchase order. Clients & Profits duplicates this essential work flow process, but adds interactive error-checking, budget tracking, and automatic reconciliation of orders with invoices. Together they provide a standard way for anyone in production to place orders with vendors, while automatically tracking the costs on jobs and tasks for the accounting department.

Updates jobs, tasks

     Job tickets track both the net and gross amounts from purchase orders. These totals, which are updated whenever you add and save a purchase order, show the balance of the commitments you've made for job costs. Saving the purchase order increases the job's committed total, but the cost total is unchanged. This is because a PO isn't an actual job cost yet. It will be, once the vendor sends their invoice. Posting the vendor's invoice in Accounts Payable moves the cost from the job's "net POs" total to the "cost" total.

Everyone benefits in the end

     Everyone in the shop benefits from standardized purchase orders. Purchase order amounts appear on job reports, giving account executives more up-to-date, accurate summaries of the money spent so far on their jobs. If all purchases are made with POs there are fewer surprises at billing time, since the accounting department will have a reasonable idea of what costs haven't been billed by vendors yet. Large POs for printing can even be prebilled, improving the shop's cash flow.

Consider broadcast, insertion orders

     Clients & Profits handles media orders for broadcast spots and print insertions just like purchase orders. Media orders can be added for tv, radio, print, and outdoor advertising individually

or created automatically from media plans or media estimates. Broadcast orders and print insertion orders have different forms, but update jobs and tasks just like purchase orders. They are self-reconciling and can be prebilled, too.

Expensive mistakes

     Many small shops don't bother with purchase orders for good reason -- they simply don't order enough for things to fall through the cracks. A production manager at a small design firm typically deals with the same select group of vendors. If problems arise on a job, it's usually resolved quickly and personally. But a 25-person agency might have a half-dozen production staffers working with dozens of vendors, each with their own set of reps. In a shop with dozens of active jobs, it's especially easy for details, revisions, and dates to be miscommunicated. The results can be expensive mistakes -- and disputes over who's going to pay to make them right. "Sometimes people can't even remember what job the invoice belongs to," says Sheryl Creech of LJF Associates. "That's always fun."

Let vendors see their own orders

     With the My Clients & Profits! web server, any vendor can review their own purchase orders in real-time from any web browser. First, individuals who work for a vendor are set up as My C&P! web users and given an ID and a unique password. This ID and password gives a vendor rep, for example, limited access to the shop's database -- he or she can only see purchase orders issued for their company. Vendors can't add or change purchase orders, so your data is reasonably secure.

The issue is how you'll handle growth

     As your shops grows, the need to document everything you buy with a purchase order becomes more compelling. As more people in the agency order more work from vendors, the chances for error increase. And without a process for tracking purchases, there's no control. In a growing agency, the stakes are simply too high to ignore.