ABU DHABI - The Ministry of Finance, MoF, has announced the successful implementation of Procure-to-Pay, P2P, which facilitates the procurement process and e-approval of purchase orders and requests at various federal entities in the country.

"Entities can now approve the purchase requests and direct the purchase order to the supplier within minutes - if all the required documents are available," MoF said in a statement.

Mariam Mohammad Al Amiri, Assistant Under-Secretary for the Management of Financial Resources said, "The Ministry of Finance continues to enhance its services and implement best practices in digital transformation. This is in line with the ministry’s strategic vision to be the leading government entity when it comes to using best practices in government financial work." MoF said the application helps to issue practices and tenders according to procedures and regulations, and conducts technical and financial evaluation as well as final awarding operations. It also enables suppliers to deliver invoices automatically through the suppliers’ portal, where the entities can approve them and complete the payment procedures without any manual action. The average invoice approval period is (5 days) - starting from the date the invoice submission by the supplier until the payment.

The ministry has also added features to the application that allow monitoring of the completion of the supplier's invoices by the competent financial department of each federal entity within a specific timeframe. In case of any delay, escalation is made against the late person to ensure the supplier's entitlement arrives on time.

Upon completion of auditing and approval of invoices, the amount of the invoice are directly transferred through the TMS system to the Central Bank of the UAE, then directly to the supplier’s bank account – suppliers are then notified via an email. If suppliers face problems, they can directly communicate with the Technical Support specialists at MoF.

The application enables federal authorities’ officials to electronically and remotely approve all financial procedures for procurements and payments, based on the powers of accreditation granted to them as stated in the consolidated financial procedures manual. This can be done through mobile phone or tablets and at any time and place inside or outside the country.

MoF issued a segregation of duties manual that included the Procure-to-Pay application, which clarifies the rules governing the principles of segregation of duties (ensuring that the same employee is not granted duties that conflict with one another). This ensures duties are distributed to more than one employee to ensure that no employee or group of employees can commit or conceal errors or defraud while processing transactions.

The segregation of duties manual is mandatory for all federal entities that use the federal financial system. It covers more than 200 rules and clearly identifies all potential conflicts of duties. The risks (Low / Medium / High) are categorised based on the degree of conflict. MoF said it supported this by creating an electronic system to segregate duties, to enable the federal government to enhance integrity, accuracy, transparency, accountability and internal control.

© Copyright Emirates News Agency (WAM) 2020.