Our Purchasing Process
Apex Collaborative Trust spend around £5m on goods and services to support our schools each year. Suppliers to our trust need to follow our processes to allow us to make prompt payments. We use a spend management system called PLANERGY to help us get the most from our spending. The key things you need to know are:
- You should have a purchase order for goods or services you intend to supply to us. We will email you a purchase order number that you must use on your invoice. It will come from apexcollaborativetrust.no-reply@purchaseordercontrol.com
- If you don’t have a purchase order please contact the person making the purchase and ask for one.
- Send invoices to: ApexCollaborativeTrust@automata.planergy.com
- The trust central finance team deals with invoices – not the schools. Please do not send invoices to your contact in school. We will always prioritise invoices received using the correct process.
- Use the correct format for your invoice. This means:
- Invoices should be system generated PDF documents,
- Invoices should include:
- A unique reference number for the invoice
- Your company name and address
- Your VAT registration number (if you have one)
- Your bank sort code and account number
- Your email address for us to send a remittance advice
- A purchase order number
- Send queries, statements or any other correspondence to: finance@apex-trust.org. Please don’t send any of these to the automata address above as this may result in your email address being inadvertently blocked.
Other useful information
- We pay invoices by BACs transfer. We have a weekly payment run (usually on Tuesdays) during term time. We will send a remittance advice when the payment is processed. You will receive the funds in your bank account two working days after processing. For example, for Tuesday payment runs suppliers will receive funds on Thursdays.
- Outside of term time payment runs can be less frequent. We will aim to do at least one payment run every two weeks outside of term time. Check with your contact in school on when these are planned.
- Our payment terms are 30 days from the date of your invoice.
- Your purchase order will specify the delivery location and specific delivery requirements.
- Sending promotional emails to the email addresses above will likely result in your email address being blocked.
Frequently Asked Questions
I don’t have a purchase order number. What should I do?
The individual making the purchase will provide a purchase order number. They can do this by phone or email.
Do you use local suppliers?
Yes, and we want to increase the number of local suppliers we use. If you want to work with us please get in touch.
What is the best way to get in touch?
Send invoices to: ApexCollaborativeTrust@automata.planergy.com
Send everything else to: finance@apex-trust.org
Don’t send promotional emails or any other spam to the email addresses above. It may result in your email being blocked.
We prioritise email correspondence – this is the best way to get in touch. You can call us on the phone but we will usually ask you to follow the call with an email to confirm the discussion.
When will my invoice be paid?
We aim to pay all invoices within 30 days of the invoice date. You can support us to do this by following the instructions on this page.
How do I change the information you hold about my organisation?
To make changes to contact details, addresses, bank details or other standing data please get in touch using finance@apex-trust.org
What is a system generated PDF?
A system generated PDF is a PDF generated by a system as opposed to via a scanner or imaging software. They contain metadata which PLANERGY can read.
Scans of paper invoices that are saved as PDF files do not contain the same information as a system generated invoice. Most of the world’s accounting, invoicing, or sales systems produce PDF documents by default.
If you have been providing us with handwritten invoices, scanned documents, or other non-system generated invoices we would ask you to consider options for a system that creates invoices. This should also save you time and effort when sending invoices.
We also ask that you send each invoice as a separate PDF. You can still send multiple invoices in the one email, but they need to be separate invoices/PDFs.