UAE’s Ministry of Finance (MoF) has successfully implemented ‘Procure-to-Pay’ (P2P) which expedites the procurement process and e-approval of purchase orders and requests at different federal organizations 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 its official statement.
Mariam Mohammad Al Amiri, Assistant Under-Secretary for the Management of Financial Resources stated, “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’s application helps to distribute practices and tenders as per the procedures and regulations and carry-outs technical and financial evaluation as well as final awarding operations. It also allows 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 is submitted by the supplier until the payment.
The ministry has also attached features to the application that enable monitoring of the fulfillment of the supplier’s invoices by the accountable 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 is directly transferred through the TMS system to the Central Bank of the UAE, then directly to the supplier’s bank account wherein suppliers are then notified via an email. If suppliers face problems, they can directly interact with the Technical Support specialists at MoF.
The application empowers federal authorities’ officials to electronically and remotely approve all financial procedures for procurements and payments, based on the powers of accreditation conferred to them as stated in the consolidated financial procedures manual. This can be done through mobile phones or tablets and at any time and place inside or outside the country.
MoF published a segregation of duties manual that covered the Procure-to-Pay application, which simplifies 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 assigned 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 compulsory for all federal entities that use the federal financial system. It covers more than 200 rules and clearly distinguishes all potential conflicts of duties. The risks (Low / Medium / High) are categorized based on the degree of conflict. MoF said it supported this by creating an electronic system to divide duties, to allow the federal government to improve integrity, accuracy, transparency, accountability and internal control.
