Purchase approvals at Stockton University’s School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics used to travel by email, and some of them got separated from the orders they belonged to.
Summary
- Email couldn’t keep an order and its approvals together - Stockton’s science school, NAMS, buys for more than 75 faculty and 25 staff from many budgets and grants. With approvals spread over separate email threads, some orders sat stalled
- Each request now moves to the next person by itself - Order placers see their turn in their task list. Marie Jelinski can tell a requester where their order is in seconds
- Double orders have stopped - Nobody has accidentally ordered the same item twice since orders went into Tallyfy. Tasks that used to take Marie 30 minutes now take five. Talk to us about your approvals
Approval Management Made Easy
Stockton University - A public university in Galloway, New Jersey. Its School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, known as NAMS, runs its purchase requests as approval workflows in Tallyfy.
Ordering for a whole school by email
Marie manages purchase requests for NAMS. The school orders for more than 75 faculty and 25 staff, paid from many budgets and grants, and she told me NAMS has one of the largest budgets at the university.
When she started, every request came to her, which made things a bit easier. Then the work grew past what one person could do. The school hired people to take on parts of the job, and the approval emails no longer all landed in her inbox.
Every order ran on email back then. That would have worked if everyone had replied on the same thread, and that rarely happened. Approvals turned up in separate threads where nobody tied them back to the order, so the request sat waiting for an approval it already had. Often nobody noticed until the requester asked where their order was, and Marie found out it had never been placed.
We had multiple email threads for each order request that required multiple approvals. Things were dropping and getting lost. It was often difficult to connect the original request with all of the necessary approvals.
Marie Jelinski
For a while she kept a paper file of the approval emails, printed and stapled together, which she called ridiculous for this day and age.
How a request moves now
Each purchase request runs as a process in Tallyfy. When one approval is done, the request moves on to the next person, and whoever places the order knows when it’s their turn. Tallyfy emails them, and the request shows up in their task list with everything else that’s due or pending. Most of the people who place orders are guests in Tallyfy.
Far fewer emails go back and forth, since nobody has to chase each approval.
Marie says very little gets dropped now, because every open item sits in somebody’s tasks. Things stall only when the school sets up a new kind of request and a step ends up routed to nobody. The school fixes that routing the first time it happens.
Where’s my order?
On the day of our call, someone emailed Marie to ask where their order was. She opened the request in Tallyfy and saw it had already arrived. Whoever received it had typed in the receiving number, so in about two seconds she could reply with where the item was and which extension to call to collect it. Before, that answer meant going back through old emails, maybe a phone call, and waiting to hear back.
Tasks that used to take her 30 minutes now take five. She points out that savings like that don’t always show up in dollars and cents, but they add up.
Double orders
Two people used to see the same request and both place it. Some of what the school buys is customized and not always returnable, so a double order could mean paying for two of something it only needed one of. Since the school started recording orders in Tallyfy, there hasn’t been an accidental duplicate, because anyone who opens the request can see it’s already been ordered.
Purchase request templates to start from
Your go-to guide for requesting purchases. You'll find out when you need approval, what the spending limits are for your role, which vendors to use, and how to submit your request. If you follow this process, your purchases stay tracked and you won't blow the budget.
Getting faculty on board
Our faculty do not like change. When we first considered Tallyfy, it was anticipated to be a fight to get everyone on board. I thought I was going to have to force them and twist their arm to use it. But most users have found it to be very easy. Much easier than the old system that wasn’t working. Not only easier to work with, but required a great deal less time and our ordering system became much more efficient.
Marie Jelinski
She hasn’t heard much negative feedback since. The forms also ask people for less than the old process did.
Answers from support
When I asked if there was anything else she wanted to add, Marie brought up support. She can’t remember a question to us going more than a day without a reply, and the reply usually came with a fix or a date for one. She rated our customer service an A plus.
Her photo for this story came with a line of her own:
Tallyfy has been amazing for our over-all efficiency. I’m happy to share that info with anyone interested in your product.
Marie Jelinski
