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About Us
Zahara Purchase Orders
The Best System to Control Spend Easily
Organisations can quickly scale, adding more people and more complexity. Although the top-line may be growing due to an amazing sales strategy or investment, the bottom line may be shrinking as the discipline that made you successful is stretched. The way to recalibrate is to control costs and the easiest way to do this is scrutiny. Making sure your teams are buying from the right suppliers at the right price, in the right way. And this is where our software comes in. It helps you control your costs with approval workflows. And the good news is that our purchase order system is easy to implement and has a fast return on investment.Lets Talk POs
Hundreds of companies trust Zahara every day
Looking for the Best PO System?
A Purchase Order (PO) System is essential for streamlining how your organization procures goods and services. By implementing the best PO system, you'll bring structure to your procurement process, ensuring better control over spending and operational efficiency.
If your current process feels cumbersome, time-consuming, or error-prone—whether you're relying on manual Excel sheets or a patchwork of 365 PowerApps—it’s time for an upgrade. Adopting a robust software solution like Zahara can transform the way you manage purchases by offering a full audit trail for every transaction. This feature is invaluable not only for tracking your spending but also for meeting compliance and auditing requirements.
With the best PO system in place, you'll have full visibility over your procurement cycle, eliminating manual errors and reducing approval delays. Zahara’s scalable solution gives you real-time insights, improves collaboration across departments, and provides a centralized record of all purchases. Say goodbye to ad-hoc processes and hello to a seamless, automated system that grows with your organization’s needs.
Upgrade today and experience the benefits of the best PO system—greater control, less effort, and complete peace of mind.
How We Work:
Raise Purchase Order
Request Approval
Send PO to Supplier
Raise Purchase OrderRequest ApprovalSend PO to Supplier
Easy to use
Your teams will be discerning users of software already. They will know what's good and what's complicated. And quite frankly who wants to waste hours learning something new. If software is designed well, with simplicity in mind, a typical buyer, approver or finance person should be able to create or find purchase orders with minimum effort.
Our PO software ticks all the boxes for a fast deployment and quick take-up. We have an extensive library of videos and a help articles for those that want to get going right now. But we also provide a full, turn-key onboarding experience from our team who can consult, setup and train you and your users.
Managing your suppliers and product lists
Part of the opportunity with setting up a Purchase Order System is the chance to review your existing suppliers.
Zahara makes it easy to buy better. You can disable suppliers so your buyers can no longer see them, but all of the history is secured. You can categorise suppliers and import whole product catalogues. Ultimatey, you can make sure your buyers are using the right suppliers, with the right terms and buying products with the right price and discounts.
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Why budgets empower teams
Budgets. Where would we be if we didnt have the discipline of spending against a pre-set budget? But are your teams / departments or divisions aware of what they can spend today, next month or next quarter?
That's where Zahara comes in. Budgets can be created for both departments and projects and this can empowers your teams to be more autonomous. Every spend request can be viewed alongside the budget. Approvers cn jump in and take action to prevent a budget being breached or they can be notified to make an approval decision if the budget will be exceeded. It makes for better business process and that adds value to the bottom line as well.
Approval workflows that won't slow you down
Approval workflows that work for you. That's what we offer with Zahara. The ability to create - straight out of the box (if we had one) - a simple or very sophisticated approval flow that doesn't require any code or script or the brain dominance of a rocket scientist. Simply put the steps you want in the right order and any conditions that will determine whether the CFO will need to approve or not.
Our customers have helped us create the multitude of options we offer including steps like approvals, group approvals and sending a purchase order to a supplier. We then have multiple condition options so that people are only asked to approve under the right circumstances. Like price. And we handle all the things you will think of like holiday settings and delegations.
Staff Expense Approval and Payment
You may want approvals for ad-hoc staff expenses without the bells and whistles of a dedicated expenses system. We offer that as well. The ability to create expense claims on a mobile app that are then submitted for approval.
And with our integrated payments module, it will be possible to pay an expense claim instantly following approval. We are committed to providing the best accounts payable automation and invoice processing software we can for a fully integrated purchase to pay solution. The starting point though, is a purchase order system.
What Are the Key Elements?
Purchase Order systems will have the functionality to create purchase orders, selecting the supplier and the items you wish to buy. Most important will be layered permissions so only the right people in the organisation are able to create spend requests. The other key part of the PO system is the workflow creator. You will want a process so that spend requests - often called 'purchase requisitions' are approved first. This means you will need perhaps one or more people involved in the "sign-off". You may also want the purchas order to be sent to the supplier automatically. Zahara does all of this and more and also handles the invoice processing and matching if required.
What is a typical purchase approval process like?
Every organisation is different but we do see a lot of similarities. We recommend you divide your company into departments or what we call Divisions. The first approval step is typically the budget holder or division head. The second step might be a senior manager or general manager. There could be a third approval step for the finance head. The workflow can include messaging a buyer with the outcome - "yes place the order" or "order sent to supplier" or on reject telling them what's wrong. The workflow is divided into steps (hence the expression multi-step approval workflows) and each of these workflow steps can have conditions to decide whether to do the step or not.
Why use Zahara and not our own finance system?
Is that the sound of clunk we hear? Is your finance system designed for finance people and not everyday buyers? Simply put, Zahara is the kind of software that everyone in the business can use, regardless of their role, no matter how occasional they will need to raise a purchase request. Your finance system may be too complicated or you may find that it's licensing costs are prohibitive. Zahara is a great finance add-on and it will knock spots off the built-in functionality of your clunky finance system.
What's the ROI of a Purchase Order System
Every business is different but there are many cost savings gained from setting up a purchase order system. We think your annual Zahara subscription will be recouped in 3 - 6 months by introducing approval workflows and cutting back on waste - the wrong supplier at the wrong price - and also with efficiency gains from it being much easier to buy something without a paper-trail.
Who is Zahara best suited to?
Without a doubt, Zahara fits in really well with service based businesses. Anyone who buys stock will probably want stock control and may be better suited to use their finance system. If you are a service based business like a charity, construction, real-estate, sport team or events company, reading this, you will likely empathise with our messaging around cost controls and wanting to streamline the way you buy. If you use one of the finance system we already work with then Zahara is a great fit for you and will plugin to your world relatively easily and quickly.
Convinced yet?
Learn more about AP Automation with Zahara
The era of juggling multiple apps for accounts payable tasks is behind us. Zahara offers a comprehensive solution, allowing you to manage all four essential elements of the AP process within a single application. Additionally, Zahara boasts seamless integrations with numerous well-known financial platforms. For those utilizing custom or on-premise solutions, Zahara provides various options for data exchange, ensuring that every user's needs are met.
Download our free guide to AP AutomationWhat is a Purchase Order?
Martin Peirce - CEO & Founder of Zahara Software explains what a Purchase Order is and why they make sense for controlling spend in an organisation as well as adding clarity to the buying process, giving the finance team an advanced warning of expected spend commitments.
Useful Links
Below are some useful tools we have for your purchase order system journey.
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