Procurement software built around one chain

What procurement software is supposed to do

Procurement software is not a place to file documents. Its job is to make certain that what you ordered, what you received and what you were asked to pay are the same thing, and to stop whatever does not match before the money leaves.

Everything in InPlace runs in one sequence: suppliers, price lists, orders, goods receipt, invoices, credit notes, payment requests, payments, bank reconciliation and reports. Every document that arrives receives a row, a status and a link to the order it came from.

Three roles, duties kept apart

Separation of duties is not a setting somebody has to remember to switch on. It is the structure of the system, and each role sees and does only what belongs to it.

Who it is for

• Businesses where procurement, goods receipt and accounting pass between several people
• Businesses with more than one location that need to see both in one picture
• Businesses whose accountant is external and has to work inside the same system

And who it is not for: a business looking only for an expense tool or corporate cards, and an organisation that wants a general ERP for every department.

What happens when something does not match

The system compares what you ordered, what you received and what you were asked to pay. When the three disagree, the invoice stops and waits for a decision. It is not deleted, not approved automatically, and not left quietly in a folder until somebody notices it.

The owner sees the mismatch as something that needs attention, not as a line in a monthly report. That is the difference between a system that manages a process and a system that enables a decision: a screen that only displays data is an operational screen, not a decision screen.

An example: a partial delivery caught before payment

This is not a customer case. It illustrates the one that costs the most money and is the hardest to catch by eye: paying in full for a partial delivery.

Two comparisons would have missed it. The order and the invoice agree completely: same item, same quantity, same price. Only the third comparison, against what actually arrived, shows that the business is about to pay for goods it never received.

The invoice stops and waits for a decision. Perhaps the supplier will send the rest, perhaps a credit note follows, and perhaps the quantity was agreed in advance and nothing is wrong. The system does not decide for anyone; it puts the gap in front of the person with the authority to settle it, and keeps the decision.

Why there is no way around the approval

Most systems have a back door. A special permission, an emergency route, or an option for the owner to pay directly when it is urgent. That door opens at exactly the moments when the control is needed most.

There is no such route here. A payment always goes through an approved request, with a reason and a record, and not even the owner can step around it. The emergency route existed in the system and was removed from it.

What that means in practice is simple: when it is urgent, the process is the same process. The separation between the person who approves and the person who moves the money does not rest on the discipline of someone under pressure at the end of a day.

What happens after the payment goes out

Plenty of procurement systems end the story at the transfer. In practice that is where the part it is easy to lose money in begins: a credit note promised and never received, a double payment nobody compared against the bank, and a confirmation sitting in the mailbox of someone who has left.

• The payment confirmation is filed on the invoice itself, not in a separate folder
• A credit note is a document in its own right, linked to the invoice it came from
• Bank reconciliation runs against the actual transactions, so a payment that never left or left twice surfaces
• The accountant is the only one who does these, and the same record stays visible to the owner

That is why the journey does not end at the payment but at the bank reconciliation and the reports. An invoice with no confirmation is an invoice nobody can prove was paid.

Where my business ends and another one begins

The system serves several organisations on one set of infrastructure, and the separation between them is not a feature that can be switched off or forgotten. It is a founding principle of the system: every user belongs to one organisation, and every record is read through that link.

For anyone weighing up moving their supplier list, price lists and payments in here, that is the question that needs an answer before the question of features.

What the overview shows

Every screen in the system was built on one principle: that a manager understands within seconds what needs attention, what may cost money, and where the business stands right now. Success is defined plainly — a manager opens the screen and knows within ten seconds what his next three actions are.

Which is why the system carries no invented static figures. A measure with no data behind it shows a dash, not a zero, because a zero is a claim about reality rather than an absence of information.

What it is not

• Not another metrics screen with no decision on it
• Not an expense product that measures value by how much you spent
• Not a general ERP for every department in the organisation
• Not a loud or colourful SaaS brand. The system handles other people’s money

How to start

You can start with a single supplier. The free plan takes 20 documents a month and every other capability is open on it, because what separates the plans is the number of documents rather than a list of features.

No credit card is needed to begin, and you can move between plans at any point. Accumulated data stays in full even when moving to a lower plan.