National Business Solution 2003-NBS06
General Services Administration
The challenge faced by the General Services Administration (GSA) was how to improve the processing of receiving reports to avoid late payment of vendor invoices and related interest penalties. GSA’s Public Buildings Service (PBS) incurs interest penalties on vendor invoices that are paid late. Late payment fees incurred on a single category of invoices in FY03 totaled nearly $1 million.
While some late payments are inevitable, oftentimes this happens because receiving reports are sent to the incorrect office rather than to the office ordering the goods/services.
Specifically, receiving report requests were sent by Finance’s VITAP system to contacts according to organization code rather than the office requesting services. This meant that associates had to research and forward the information to the requesting office – and many times the receiving report request was sent by the requesting office to the contracting officer (conflict of interest) to submit via VITAP.
The solution devised by GSA was to have the associate designated by the Requesting Office will now enter his/her e-mail address directly into Pegasys using the purchasing document at the time the obligation is established.
This policy has the following benefits:
- Eliminates overdue invoices that need a receiving report.
- Immediate processing of receiving reports while simultaneously validating work completion by the requesting office.
- Elimination of conflict of interest by taking the contract officer out of the receiving report request chain.
- Save time budget analyst spends researching and forwarding receiving report requests.
- Process change does not incur additional resources.
For more information, contact Matthew McCombs on 202-501-0822, or by email at matthew.mccombs@gsa.gov.
