Nobody Checks In a Cleaning Contract
A purchase order for office cleaning, a month of security, a day of equipment calibration. The goods-received screen asks how many units arrived. For a service there is no right answer to that question, so we stopped asking it.
Procurement systems are built around a delivery van. Something is ordered, something arrives, a storekeeper counts it and signs, and the count becomes the evidence that unlocks payment. It is a good process and it is the backbone of three-way matching.
Then somebody raises a purchase order for a month of cleaning. Nothing arrives in a van. There is nothing for the storekeeper to count and nowhere on a shelf to put it. And until now, the order could not be paid until someone checked it in.
What used to happen
Either the service was set up as a stock item so it could be checked in, which put a month of cleaning into stock value until somebody issued it out again, or it was bought outside procurement altogether, as an expense claim or a direct bill, with no request, no quotation and no purchase order behind it. The first corrupts stock. The second removes the controls that procurement exists to provide.
A month of cleaning should not spend a day in stock value.
Requesting and sourcing a service
A service can now be requested like any other item. When a request carrying a service is approved, it goes out to suppliers as a quotation request, because there is no stock to issue a service from. A request that mixes goods and services can still issue the goods from the warehouse; the services go to sourcing. A request for services alone that someone tries to fulfil from stock is refused, with the reason.
Suppliers quote, a quote is awarded, and a purchase order is raised in the usual way. What awarding a quote does to the service's own price is the subject of a subcontractor's quote should not reprice your rate card.
Confirming delivery instead of checking in
On a purchase order, each service line is received by a delivery confirmation: a record that the work on that line was done, by whom it was confirmed and when. It is not a stock receipt. No warehouse is chosen, no location, no batch, and nothing enters stock.
- Who can confirm. The same people who can receive goods. A workflow that already decides who signs for deliveries does not have to be redesigned for services.
- What it books. The cost of the work at the order price, to the service's expense account or your general purchases account, against the supplier's payable.
- What it refuses. A stock item, which still has to be checked in, and confirming more than was ordered.
- When the order is complete. When every line, goods and services alike, has been checked in or confirmed.
Goods on the same order still go through check-in, and check-in refuses a service line, so neither can be received through the other's door.
Returns and credits
Goods can be returned to a supplier. A service cannot be, because there is nothing to send back. A supplier return that includes a service is refused and points you to a debit note, which is the right instrument for a credit on work that was unsatisfactory.
Paying for the order is covered in a three-way match for work you cannot count, and five names for every cost is the background on where procurement costs land.
Four questions for any system you buy services through
How do I receive a service on a purchase order?
What you will hear
Through goods received.
How to read it
Ask what quantity and which warehouse. If there are answers, the service is going into stock.
Who is allowed to confirm a service was delivered?
What you will hear
Anyone with access to the order.
How to read it
Confirmation unlocks payment. It should sit with the same people who sign for goods.
What does confirming a service post?
What you will hear
Often, nothing until the bill.
How to read it
Then work done this month and billed next month is missing from this month's costs.
How do I get a credit for a service that was not done properly?
What you will hear
Return it.
How to read it
A service cannot be returned. Look for a debit note.
What AWRA OpsHub does today
- Services on requests, sent to suppliers as quotation requests on approval.
- A delivery confirmation for service lines on a purchase order, separate from check-in.
- Confirmation by the people who receive goods, with the date and the confirmer recorded.
- The cost booked on confirmation to the service's expense account or your purchases account, against the supplier's payable.
- Refusals in both directions: check-in refuses a service and confirmation refuses a stock item or an over-confirmation.
- Supplier returns that refuse a service and point to a debit note.
More we can add to your workspace
- An expense account picker on the service form, so each bought-in service books to its own cost line without setup outside the form.
- Reversing a confirmation from the order page, with the reversal posted and recorded.
- Input tax on a confirmation, for jurisdictions that reclaim it at the point the cost is recognised.
- Service costs charged to a project's work in progress when the order belongs to a project.
Where we point you to a specialist
- We will not let a service be received through stock to make it fit the goods process. The two doors are separate on purpose.
- Who in your organization may confirm that work was done is your control to design. We tie it to the permission that receives goods, and we do not decide who holds it.
Each item in the middle column can be scoped and quoted for your workspace.
Anything above that you need, we can build for you
Everything listed above as something we can add describes what ships in the standard product today — it is a starting point, not a limit on what AWRA OpsHub can do for your organisation. Kenya's eTIMS integration and its maintained payroll engine are both in the product because clients needed them and commissioned them; neither appeared by itself, and the same door is open for whatever you just read about. One qualification so this is worth what it claims: a small number of things on this blog we deliberately leave to a specialist rather than build — a statutory ledger we will not sign our name to, a rule that would decide a tax question for you, a clinical or member-funds record that belongs in a regulated system — and where that is true the post says so in those words. Everything else is a scope, a timeline and a price.
The operational work, which is what most commissions actually are
An extra approval stage in a chain that does not match the standard one, a custom field set on employees or assets that only your sector needs, an expiry that has to block an order rather than send an email, a report your board asks for in a shape nothing produces, or a scanner or weighbridge feeding the goods-in door. These are the commissions we are asked for most often and the smallest ones we quote — and unlike a revenue-authority pipeline, none of them waits on a regulator.
The module-shaped additions, which are the ones readers ask for most often
A price list with real discount authority, a customer-facing quotation that expires, a bill of materials or recipe costing, a staff advance that is issued, acquitted and chased, a member or unit ledger, a matching rule that holds a payment. Each of these is a build rather than a setting, and each has been quoted before — a bigger piece of work than a custom field, with a written spec and a date instead of a roadmap slide.
The report, document or pack nothing currently produces
The board pack in the shape your board actually asks for, a donor or funder layout, an invoice or receipt template carrying what your regulator or your customer expects, a dataset the report builder cannot reach yet. Usually the fastest thing on this list to deliver, because the data is already in the system.
Systems, rails and hardware you already run
The accounting package, CRM, online store, core banking or custom database you intend to keep — connected through our API so a fact is entered once and appears everywhere it is needed. Plus the physical edge: a scanner, a scale, a weighbridge or a till peripheral feeding the door it belongs to.
How it works: you describe the requirement, we return a written scope, timeline and cost, and once agreed it is built into your environment and maintained as part of the product. Nothing here waits on a regulator or a published specification, which is why operational builds are the ones we quote fastest. Tell us the requirement that would otherwise rule us out — that is a better first conversation than a demo.
Tell us what your operation needsIn one line
Request a service, source it, order it, and confirm it was delivered. The cost is booked when you confirm, nothing goes into stock, and the people who sign for goods are the people who sign for work.
Raise a service order and confirm it
The feature page walks through the purchase side.
See how service items workFrequently asked questions
How do I receive a service on a purchase order?
With a delivery confirmation on the service line. It records that the work was done, by whom and when, and nothing enters stock.
Who can confirm a service was delivered?
The same people who can receive goods on a purchase order.
What does a delivery confirmation post?
The cost of the work at the order price, to the service expense account or your purchases account, against the supplier payable.
Can I return a service to a supplier?
No. A supplier return that includes a service is refused and points you to a debit note.
What happens to a request that includes services?
On approval the services go to suppliers as a quotation request. Goods on the same request can still be issued from stock.
