Procurement
The person who chooses an article in a B2B company is rarely the person who may commit the money. Between them sits a purchasing rule: a cost centre, a budget, a spending limit, a sign-off chain. A shop that ignores that rule cannot be used inside the company. This guide is about reproducing the rule faithfully, so that ordering in your shop follows the buyer's own procurement policy instead of going around it.
Two apps carry it, and both sit in the Cockpit's Procurement section:
| App | What it holds | Cockpit screens |
|---|---|---|
| cost-centers | Cost centres, their budgets with a ledger, restrictions on who may book where, and one personal limit per contact | Cost centres › Cost centres, Budgets, Personal limits |
| procurement | Approval rules, purchase requests and their approvals, and the logs that track budget bookings | Purchase requests, Approval rules, Direct order log, Budget returns |
When a buyer checks out, the shop hands the cart to the procurement app, and the app decides on the server: the cart becomes an order, a purchase request that waits for approval, or a refusal. The buyer cannot pick the outcome. Whether the rules are read at all is a tenant setting, the Approval gate, and it is on by default.
Everything here runs in the Cockpit and in the shop's checkout. The apps send no email: no message goes to an approver or a buyer, and there are no reminders, deputies or escalations. Plan for that before you agree a policy with a customer.
Understand
- How procurement governance works — What a purchasing department is protecting, and the four controls it uses.
- Approval models — Single approver, chains per cost centre, parallel cost centres.
- Purchase requests vs. orders — A request is not yet an order, and the difference matters for stock and invoicing.
Set up
- Cost centres — Master data, restrictions, currency, tracking-only centres.
- Budgets — Allowance, period, carry-over and the nightly rollover.
- Approval rules — Conditions, effects, approvers and sequence.
- Buyer spend limits — One personal limit per contact, and the rule that reads it.
Work with it
- The buyer's path: submit for approval — What happens when the shop submits a cart.
- The approver's path: approve or decline — Chains, decisions, and the two overrides.
- Reading the budget ledger — Every movement on a budget, and what caused it.
- Procurement reporting — What you can pull from the lists and the ledger.
Keep it healthy
- Approvals that get stuck — Requests nobody decides, and how to clear them.
- Procurement data hygiene — Cost centres, budgets and approvers that drift out of date.