The buyer and approver paths
Work with it — Procurement & Approvals.
The day-to-day.
Two of these articles describe journeys you do not walk yourself. The buyer's path and the approver's path happen at your customer's company, in the storefront, and you read them so that you can recognise what somebody is describing on the phone. Walk both once, as a real contact at a real customer, before that customer goes live.
The other two are yours. The budget ledger is what you read when a controller questions a number, and the reports are what you hand a customer's Einkaufsleiter without being asked — spend visibility is one of the four controls they are protecting, and it is the one they currently produce by hand.
- The buyer's path: submit for approval — What the buyer sees and does.
- The approver's path: approve, reject, delegate — Queue, notifications, decision, comment.
- Reading the budget ledger — Reserved, committed, spent, remaining.
- Procurement reports for your customer — Spend by cost centre, approvals by approver, cycle time.