What is procurement in Spendbase?

The Procurement feature in general helps your organization streamline the process of acquiring goods and services, ensuring a standardized and structured approach.

It covers the entire procurement lifecycle, from identifying a need for a solution (software, hardware, services, or goods), exploring vendors, contacting suppliers, selecting a winner, approving the purchase, signing documents, making payments, and renewing services or contracts.

Procurement in Spendbase starts with covering Approval flow at the moment but you're going to see more soon

What's included now:

1. Approval flow management

2. Submitting and tracking requests

3. Notifications via email

4. Managing requests and approvals right in Slack

Spendbase’s Procurement process includes several stages designed to structure how goods and services are acquired:

1. Approval Flow Creation:

• As an Admin, you can create and customize procurement workflows to match your company’s needs.
• Workflows consist of a workflow name, an optional description, and a three-step process:
  • Flow initiation: Name your workflow and provide a brief description.
  • Request form creation: Set up the form employees will use when submitting procurement requests, with customizable questions that can be toggled on/off.
  • Approval flow setup: Define a sequential, parallel, or mixed approval flow, where each step must be completed for the request to be approved.

2. Submitting Requests:

• Employees (Member role) can submit procurement requests via the defined workflow. The request form will ask predefined questions, such as:
  • What is the request type?
  • Which vendor are you requesting from?
  • What is the expected price?
  • Which department is requesting this?
  • What is the billing cycle?
  • What is the due date?
• Once submitted, requests are stored in the system, awaiting approval.

3. Approval Flow Types:

• Each procurement request goes through an approval process based on the workflow setup.
• Approval can be sequential (one step at a time), parallel (multiple approvers at the same time), or mixed (a combination of sequential and parallel steps).
• Approvers can approve or decline the request from the request details page or directly from the grid.