Vendor Management

Vendor Management

• Vendor Data Quality

  Look for missing or incomplete critical data when input validation is weak or non-existent. Use the various Arbutus functions to test for completeness by deploying filters and the Count command to document the results.

  IsBlank(<field name>) will tell you if a key character field such as the City field has no content.
  
  Format(<field name>) will display the underling numeric/alpha content of a field. For example, to test the vendor telephone numbers for appropriate content, use the expected format of your supplier data to identify non-conforming numbers. In the US and Canada, telephone numbers consist of 10 digits. Your filter would look like this:
  
  Format(Phone_No) <> "(999) 999-9999"

   

• Conflicts of Interest

  Compare vendor and employee telephone numbers, addresses, bank accounts, and tax IDs to identify identical or similar entries. Use the SortNormalize function to standardize the data, then execute a many-to-many Join between the two files.

• Watch List Comparisons

  Download the GSA SAM file or the OFAC list and use the same process as the conflict of interest test to identify possible matching names or addresses.

• Inactive Vendors

  A vendor account that has not been active leaves it open to fraud. To identify vendors who have not been active in the past year, download the payments data and the vendor master file. Then, run an unmatched Join between the two files on the vendor number with the vendor master as the primary file. The output will consist of all vendors who have not been active.