Audit program contracts

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Contract Management , Contract Management Audit. Shannon Greaney Oct 29, PM. Contract management best practices can unlock significant value for businesses by creating cross-departmental time-savings, driving down costs and reducing business risk. And many of these best practices are simple to implement, meaning this value is easily attainable. Yet businesses will still overlook these opportunities in favour of other initiatives with less certain upsides.

Ask yourself these questions:. If any of these scenarios sound familiar, your contract management processes can benefit from being audited. By regularly reviewing how your contracts are managed you can identify any shortcomings in your approach and overall contract governance , allowing you to make significant improvements that benefit the business as a whole.

Carrying out the audit will enable your business to identify contract risks early on — whether financial, regulatory or operational — and take action. By improving internal processes, you can in turn mitigate external risks that are introduced by third-party suppliers. An audit of your contract management processes should be carried out regularly, ideally once every quarter.

Contract management can look different to businesses depending on their size, internal resource and how complex their contracts are. However, there are a few commonalities that all businesses need to prioritise to best position themselves for effective contract management. Managing contracts with Excel is great for businesses taking their first step into contract management, while enterprise-ready software will help large businesses to get a better handle on their portfolio.

Your contracts need to be stored centrally, securely and be easy to access, from wherever the team members are. Likewise, businesses using sophisticated software need to ensure that employees are assigned with the right levels of access, even if the contracts have been centralised.

When accessibility is optimised, your business gives back time and control to teams that are usually overwhelmed. Instead of spending hours trying to locate contracts and find relevant information, self-service can become the norm. That way, the central team or person can spend time focusing on their day-to-day and overall objectives. A lot of time is spent on contract generation leading many businesses to template their approach — especially when the same types of contracts are created.

Research Study Publications Internal Auditor Newsletters Blogs. New to Certification? Why Become Certified? Download Handbook. Currently Enrolled? Already Certified? Online Seminars. Virtual Symposiums. Executive Development. On-site Training. Upcoming Conferences. Conferences FAQ. Browse by Location. Browse by Category. Trending Pulse of Internal Audit. Course Description Course Description. Committee Members and Chapter Leaders. To obtain the maximum benefit of the audit, make sure that you are identifying specific areas of potential exposure.

Timing is important when choosing to perform a contract audit. The optimal time to initiate an audit is when you have leverage to recover any potential overpayments or change processes. The ability to perform these actions can be influenced by your relationship with your distributor, among other factors.

It is also important to consider whether your distributor has the liquidity available to fix any overpayments. From a practical standpoint, you will want to take the time to consider when you have the upper hand in each financial quarter and choose to execute the audit when it is most beneficial to you. There is no need for a contract compliance audit to be presented in a hostile or combative manner.

Rather, when you present the idea to your partner, it should be framed as a necessary collaboration. Menu Skip to content. By Daniel McConville Auditing is a powerful, yet underrated business tool for helping businesses comply with contractor obligations.

This type of auditing may tell you whether a contractor: Is licensed; Is insured; and Will be safe while completing the job Are you making this common contractor auditing mistake? What are your exact obligations to contractors? How can you make sure you meet these obligations?

Here are five simple steps you can take to ensure you are complying: Identify the contractors in your workplace or on your worksite Ensure that you have inducted all contractors. What are contractor management procedures?