Budget Planning and Spending with E-Procurement
September can be an important month for local government organization’s purchasing departments, as it often brings the end of the fiscal year. Not only does it mean often meeting with departments for last minute requests to fulfill the previous year’s budget, but it also means budget planning for the next year. Whether your fiscal year-end is in September or another month, end-of-year budgeting can be a hectic time for government purchasing professionals! Access to a thorough e procurement solution like BidNet Direct, can help ease the dread that typically comes at the beginning of every fall.
Get the most bang for your buck
When looking at the previous year’s budget usage, no purchasing professional wants to question whether or not they could have gotten more out of their available funds. With these funds being made up of taxpayer money, it’s even more imperative that each dollar is wisely spent. An e-procurement solution with an extensive vendor pool like BidNet Direct’s can assure both your agency and your taxpayers that you are making each dollar count. By hosting solicitations within an e-sourcing solution, each opportunity is opened to a large vendor pool. This type of vendor outreach will likely result in increased bid competition with less work involved, saving your agency money!
This ease of vendor outreach can be especially helpful at the end of the fiscal year. When it comes time to finish spending the previous year’s budget, it’s important to be able to easily distribute your solicitations to a vast number of vendors. BidNet Direct makes the distribution process easy, and its extensive vendor pool makes it easy to spend your surplus budget last minute!
Planning for next year's budget
BidNet Direct’s purchasing platform can also assist your agency in planning its budget for the following year by providing access to an extensive bid library. If your agency knows that they have a big project coming up within the next fiscal year, you are likely planning out the costs associated with that project. However, you may not be at the point of formally requesting proposals or quotes, so that could leave a good amount of guess work when it comes to estimating a project’s actual costs. With thousands of public bid awards posted within BidNet Direct’s bid library, your agency can look up similar projects in order to get an idea of the cost estimate for your own upcoming solicitations. This can be essential when planning a budget that requires taxpayer approval. Additionally, other local government agencies may have recently posted a similar solicitation to your own that your agency could then use to piggy back off of. This would not only give you an exact cost for the project, but it would also eliminate the need for the legwork typically associated with the typical purchasing process.
Additional modules means additional benefits
The purchasing platform offered by BidNet Direct also offers additional modules that cover every aspect of the purchasing process, several of which can assist when it comes time for budget discussions. For example, the Contract Management module will provide notifications for expiring contracts, eliminating surprise costs that were overlooked when budgets were decided on. Our Bid Evaluation module also lets your agency set parameters that streamlines the evaluation of any received bid responses. Not only will this free up valuable time for your purchasing professionals, but it will ensure that the costs associated with each bid submission is weighed against any other key aspects required by your agency.
The end of the fiscal year can be a stressful time for any purchasing department, local government agencies not excluded. Utilizing BidNet Direct’s purchasing platform can take some of the stress off your plate and ease the purchasing process for this next fiscal year.
Find out how BidNet Direct can help your government organization today! 
