Due Diligence and Ongoing Monitoring

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Tracking Vendor Spend

  • 1.  Tracking Vendor Spend

    Posted 01-23-2020 01:56 PM
    Hi there,

    We have been discussing how to track annual vendor spend recently at our bank, per our CEO's request. My question is: how do folks go about maintaining and recording/documenting vendor spend? Do you put it in a field in Venminder? How often do you report out this statistic? Monthly, quarterly,  bi-annually, annually?

    Thank you!!


  • 2.  RE: Tracking Vendor Spend

    Posted 01-24-2020 09:56 AM
    Hello!  We pull a report from our AP and enter the annual spend (or anticipated spend per contract details) in a custom field in Venminder.  Ideally, we'd have a field which shows expected spend per the contract, and a field which shows actual spend, so we can help our business leads identify any possible issues, but we're not there yet. Hope that helps.
    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: Tracking Vendor Spend

    Posted 01-24-2020 11:25 AM
    Meranda,

    Good Morning and thank you for bringing this discussion to the ThinkTank Community! The most common way I see this tracked by clients within the Venminder system is by using a custom data field. You have 2 options for where you build this field: vendor profile or contract detail page. Both locations would provide reportable data, it's really a matter of which report is more beneficial for your needs and personal preference.

    Building the field in the vendor profile would allow you to pull the information into a Master Vendor Product report, which also reports such information as which control assessments were completed for each vendor/product, and what oversight tasks are required for that vendor/product. This is a great report to use for board meetings and for regular reporting to your direct supervisors.

    Within the contract details page, the information could be generated from a contract report. If this information would be reviewed alongside product-specific details such as terms and conditions, you may want to consider building the custom field in this page.

    These are a few options to consider. I would love to hear what others are doing to track this information!
    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: Tracking Vendor Spend

    Posted 01-28-2020 11:47 AM
    We pull a report from our AP system and track expenses outside of Venminder.  We considered adding a custom field or two but determined we would be updating these fields every month on over 200 vendors and that was too labor intensive and also presented too much room for error.​
    Original Message


  • 5.  RE: Tracking Vendor Spend

    Posted 01-28-2020 12:11 PM
    We pull a report from AP at the end of each year which shows total dollars spent and number of payments made during the designated time frame, then we reference it all year long as we work through our vendor due diligence.  On a somewhat related note, we're also starting a massive reconciliation of our database right now to ensure that we're not missing any vendors, and it all starts with the AP data (we track charitable sponsorships in the same database with our vendors, so we have about 1,000 companies to track).  Everything starts with "show me the money!"
    Original Message


  • 6.  RE: Tracking Vendor Spend

    Posted 06-03-2021 04:34 PM
    Hi, 
    This is a huge concern, tracking labor forecast vs actual against specific projects.  Why? Because we want to manage our budgets and some external labor costs can be capitalized which effects the bottom line, That is why the CEO is asking for it. Using customize fields to back numbers is not efficient.  There needs to be a modular that drives reporting and data analytics that can report on spend and labor efficiencies.
    Original Message


  • 7.  RE: Tracking Vendor Spend

    Posted 06-03-2021 04:41 PM
    Hi there, I'm tracking this post as well for responses. I see the comment on the "why" but how do others track finances within Venminder? There doesn't appear to be an API that connect to an accounting program. I requested our accounting dept to pull a data dump on vendor spending for 2020 just to get a gauge and did a VLookup to put it all in a spreadsheet. Definitely curious on further thoughts as well. Great question!

    ------------------------------
    Sheila Freyou

    Director, Vendor Management
    Celebrity Home Loans, LLC
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 8.  RE: Tracking Vendor Spend

    Posted 06-03-2021 04:46 PM
    Hi, 

    We prepare it manually and have not yet adopted Venminder primarily for this reason. Clarity, does provide this functionality and what we are currently using 

    Denise Lima 
    Director, Vendor Management 

    Original Message


  • 9.  RE: Tracking Vendor Spend

    Posted 06-03-2021 05:44 PM
    We track all of our vendor expenses in a separate spreadsheet which we populate with data from our AP system.  I'd love to see it all in Venminder but cannot justify the manual labor required to update almost 400 vendors on a monthly basis.  We've developed a pretty good system with the spreadsheets and several complicated vLookups!
    Original Message


  • 10.  RE: Tracking Vendor Spend

    Posted 06-07-2021 09:40 AM

    Hi There-

    This is Jen and I am on the Product team at Venminder. I have a few updates I can share with you. First, Vendor Spend functionality is on our roadmap for this year. We are currently working through the implementation details and your feedback would be incredibly valuable. If you are open sharing more details around your use cases please let us know and we will have our team reach out to coordinate a meeting.

    Second, development is currently underway on our API that will allow for you to push vendor and product data into Venminder from another application like your AP system. These additional capabilities will alleviate the manual process of updating information like Vendor Spend in Venminder. If you would like more information on the API let us know and we would be happy to provide that to you.

    Regards, 
    Jen


    Original Message


  • 11.  RE: Tracking Vendor Spend

    Posted 06-07-2021 11:14 AM
    Hi

    Can we catch up at 2PM IST India time




    Original Message


  • 12.  RE: Tracking Vendor Spend

    Posted 06-07-2021 11:57 AM

    Hi

    Sorry, I will be in meetings – did you have some specific questions perhaps I can answer via email?

     

    Denise

     

     

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    Original Message


  • 13.  RE: Tracking Vendor Spend

    Posted 06-07-2021 02:41 PM

    Nope – I was trying to reply to Jen – sorry!

     

    Christy Pappas
    Assistant Vice President Vendor Management & Facilities Officer



     



    Original Message


  • 14.  RE: Tracking Vendor Spend

    Posted 06-08-2021 09:35 AM
    Hey Jen,  these sound like great enhancements. One thing we were struggling with that I wanted to bring your attention as you create this field is if the Vendor Spend could be a 'private' field only able to be seen by admins, execs and the Product Owner & Collaborators. We were going to create custom fields for this but the data is visible for all people who have access to the system to see which didn't sit great with some of our Vendor Product Owners. Thansk!
    Michelle
    Original Message


  • 15.  RE: Tracking Vendor Spend

    Posted 06-08-2021 12:18 PM
    Why do you want to track vendor spend in a vendor risk management system? We use LogicManager and I added a drop-down field that allows the relationship manager to select a range of annual spend. That range is used for contract legal review purposes, not vendor risk ranking.

    Separately I receive a report quarterly from Accounts Payable that identifies payments by vendor. My purpose of the report is two-fold:
    1. Determine if we are still actively using vendors and then to follow-up with the Relationship Manager if there is no spend during a 12-month period.
    2. Identify potential new vendors that haven't been added to the vendor management system.

    I haven't read a compelling reason in this thread as to why you need to track vendor spend.
    Original Message


  • 16.  RE: Tracking Vendor Spend

    This message was posted by a user wishing to remain anonymous
    Posted 06-08-2021 01:13 PM
    This message was posted by a user wishing to remain anonymous

    ​We also review quarterly reports from Accts Payable to look at vendor spend to identify significant vendors by $$$ as a proxy for concentration risk, reconcile spend back to contractual amount since some business units will process any invoice that comes their way or play games by authorizing additional work exceeding their approved amount, finding if multiple departments are using the same vendor where we may consolidate into a master service agreement for better pricing.  We also periodically report top critical vendors (for functionality perspective) and top dollar spend (for expenditure perspective) to the Board.
    Original Message