IMP Finance
Budget-led Purchasing
Empower your budget holders to make smarter spend decisions, eliminate purchasing faff, and make life easier for you and your finance team. Purchasing is your ‘win-win’ approach to MAT purchasing and financial management.
What is Purchasing?
Purchasing – at the heart of IMP Finance – enables your Trust to systemise its entire requisition-to-invoice management process. For the first time, we’re making sure that your budgets set the direction to remove the “faff” from the process.
This approach ensures a more unified, efficient, and accurate way to manage your financial data. It also means that your actuals continually shape your forecast, increasing future budget accuracy and saving your finance team huge amounts of time.
One system
Purchasing is built directly in the Planner database – which includes IMP Finance – so data from each area is available to the other and vice versa. No integration, no faff, just a single solution, ensuring coding consistency and real-time tracking of spend vs budgets.
Taking the faff out of MAT Purchasing
Taking the ‘Faff out of MAT Finance’ is what we’re all about. Now, we’ve set our sights on Purchasing.
Say goodbye to:
Actuals vs budget inconsistency
Actuals can get posted against different codes to your budget, making it difficult to track budget and spend accurately, leading to time-consuming re-coding.
Budget holders overspending
Budget holders often overspend because their purchasing system shows they have more left to spend than they actually do. This happens when reports fail to include future committed purchases that are yet to be rasied as an order such as upcoming subscriptions.
Unreliable workflow approvals
Current purchasing solutions don’t fit the specific needs of MATs and are either too limited or too complex. This results in poor, clunky, hard-to-maintain, time-consuming approval workflows that are full of holes and vulnerable to error, resulting in off-system workarounds.
What good Purchasing looks like with IMP Software
Budget-led Purchasing
Purchasing starts with the budget. Budget holders simply select the budget items they recognise, and we automatically assign the correct codes and funds. This means users don’t need to understand technical finance codes and funds – they can focus on what they know, and we’ll handle the rest, eliminating manual errors and guesswork. This process also guarantees consistency between actuals and the budget, reducing manual review, providing better visibility for budget holders, and improving budgeting and forecasting accuracy.
Eliminates guesswork and applies the correct codes from the start.
Ensures accurate and reliable financial reporting.
Consistent data enhances financial planning and decision making.
Eliminate budget holder overspending
Increase your budget holders’ visibility and provide greater clarity on actual available spend. Purchasing includes committed budget items from IMP that are yet to have a requisition or order raised (but should still be accounted for when assessing remaining budgets).
Always get a ‘true’ picture of what your budget holders have left to spend.
Your budget holders will never see that they have more to spend than they actually do, giving you spend control you can rely on.
Remove the faff of creating POs for every item in your budget.
Systemised controls ensure budgets can’t be overspent.
MAT-specific workflows
Say goodbye to systems that don’t allow you to reflect your scheme of delegation, and hello to MAT workflows that actually work! Our MAT-specific, pre-defined workflows align with your purchasing policies, keeping you in control. Eliminate off-system workarounds with a fully systemised purchasing process, removing gaping holes in your internal control framework.
Systemise your Trust’s procurement policies in full and eliminate paper/manual workarounds.
With Purchasing, manage workflows yourself. There’s no need to pay extortionate consultancy fees to build and redesign approval workflows.
Purchasing features that drive your MAT forward
From the start, Purchasing has been built in partnership with MATs. The result? A Purchasing platform packed with tools that drive your trust forward.
Automated nominal codes
Budget row detail is used to automatically apply the correct nominal and cost centre codes.
Granular forecasting
Forecast at a budget row level to drive a better understanding of what’s happening.
MAT Workflows designed by you
Create and manage workflows that meet your MAT’s needs.
Link with IMP Planner
Linking with IMP Planner drives better spend management, forecasting and budgeting.
Non-committed budget rows
Purchasing includes budget rows that are yet to have a requisition/order raised, giving you a true picture of available spend.
Budget-Led Finance
We ensure the budget sets the direction resulting in consistency of coding and real-time tracking of spend vs budgets.
User friendly platform
Purchasing is designed to be easy to use for everyone – not just finance, reducing the risk of off-system purchases and processes.
Actual 'Left to spend' figures
Budget holders get a ‘true’ picture of what they actually have left to spend, which provides greater control and reduces overspending.
Purchasing FAQs
What makes this Purchasing solution different to others?
We don’t just automate bad purchasing—we make it better. Our system is designed specifically for MATs, recognising their unique requirements and ensuring a seamless fit. Most importantly, it’s built around budget-led finance, meaning every purchase starts with the budget, ensuring control, consistency, and ultimately driving better forecasting and budgeting.
Why has IMP Software developed a Purchasing solution?
Spend processing is a high-volume game and we understand the challenges MATs experience with existing tools. Traditional purchasing processes often create inefficiencies, lack transparency, and lead to inconsistent budgeting. Our solution streamlines the entire purchasing journey, ensuring it’s budget-led, efficient, and tailored to the unique needs of MATs. By improving purchasing, we help organisations save time, stay within budget, and gain better control over their finances.
Can I use Purchasing without IMP Planner?
Purchasing can be used without the need to buy our Planner software. Whilst there are added benefits of using our budgeting tool too, we remain system agnostic and will work with all systems.
Discover IMP Planner.
Which finance systems does Purchasing work with?
Purchasing works with all finance systems. Speak to us directly and we can talk through how the integration works with your finance system.
How long does it take to implement?
Implementation times will vary depending on the number of schools and the makeup of your MAT. Speak to us for a tailored implementation plan?
How much does Purchasing cost?
Our pricing is tailored to your organisation’s needs, so the best way to get an accurate cost is to speak with us directly. We’re committed to delivering real value.
User limits
You get unlimited users with purchasing. No hidden costs or surprises as you add users to your organisation.
What support is available for Purchasing?
Purchasing is backed by the same world-class support and training our IMP Planner customers speak so highly of. Our team brings extensive experience in developing and supporting purchasing systems.
