Short answer. One request per need, from the phone: item or description, quantity, cost centre, justification, quote attached. An approval chain written once by the manager, by amount threshold and cost centre, with a delegation when the approver is away, played by the code: the requester cannot approve themselves, and the station not required for this amount is skipped. An envelope per cost centre and period, with four figures, spent, committed, pending, available, consumed at approval, not at invoice. A numbered purchase order generated from the approved request, sent to the referenced supplier with an acknowledgement, with an expected date at the measured lead time. A reception linked to the order, and a three-way matching, invoice, order, reception: an invoice without an order number is returned to the supplier, a gap is blocked until the credit note or the additional order. A board per cost centre says every morning what is left.
This guide is for the twenty-to-two-hundred-person company where several leads buy, the manufacturer, the distributor, the clinic, the private school, the group of companies, and the founder based in France who wants to approve from their phone and know, before year end, what has been committed. It does not repeat how stock is replenished, reorder point and proposal per supplier, described in the replenishment guide, nor how delivered goods are quality-checked, described in the incoming inspection guide; here it is about non-stock purchases, and stock purchases seen from the side of whoever decides: parts, services, equipment, advertising, works. Accounting and tax rules, account allocations, required supporting documents, and public procurement rules are for the accountant and counsel; this guide builds the application that requests, approves, commits, orders and matches.
Purchasing, in five layers
The approval rule is the accented layer: it is written once and played by the code, never picked case by case.
Request. One request per need, not per supplier: the item if it exists in the catalogue, otherwise a description, the quantity, the cost centre, a one-sentence justification, the supplier's quote attached as a photo as in the trustworthy photos guide; from the phone, offline as in the offline guide, because the workshop lead is not at a computer. A purchase requisition is, in the common description, an internal request to obtain goods or services; it commits nobody until it is approved. Approval rules. A chain by amount threshold and cost centre: for instance department lead up to 100,000 dinars, manager up to 500,000, top management above, each station possibly differing per centre; a written delegation after an absence delay; separation of requester and approver; all played by the code, with the roles of the roles guide, and logged. The station not required is skipped, the one required cannot be bypassed. Budget. An envelope per cost centre and period, written by the manager; four figures recomputed at every request, spent, committed by open orders, pending approval, available; the envelope is consumed at approval, and the overrun rule, alert, block or escalation, is written.
Order and reception. The purchase order is generated from the approved request, numbered, with the referenced supplier, and sent by e-mail or WhatsApp as in the notifications guide with an acknowledgement; in the common description, a purchase order is a commercial document issued by the buyer to the seller, indicating the types, quantities and agreed prices; what it binds legally is a question for counsel, not for this guide. The expected date comes from the supplier's measured lead time, and the reception is linked to the order: quantity received, check as in the incoming inspection guide, gap noted. A new supplier is referenced with an approval before its first order. Matching. The invoice is matched to the order and the reception, line by line; an invoice without an order number is returned to the supplier, a practice known as “no PO, no pay”; a quantity or price gap is blocked until the credit note or the approved additional order; matched invoices are exported to accounting as in the integration guide, and their automatic reading follows the invoice reading guide.
Buying, in six beats
The approval is the accented beat: it follows a written chain, is given from the phone, and commits the envelope the instant it is given.
Request: the workshop lead photographs the quote, picks the item or describes the need, sets the cost centre, and submits; he sees the centre's envelope and its chain right away. Check the budget: the application computes the available amount, envelope minus spent minus committed minus pending, and shows it to every approver; above the envelope, the written rule applies, block or escalation. Approve: each station receives a notification, approves or refuses with a reason from the phone, signed and timestamped; after the written absence delay, the delegation takes over; the station not required is skipped by the rule.
Order: the order is generated from the request without retyping, numbered, printed or sent as in the printing guide, with an acknowledgement; the envelope moves from “pending” to “committed”. Receive: the reception is entered against the order, quantity, check, photo, gap noted; a partial delivery leaves the rest committed. Match and pay: the invoice quotes the order number, otherwise it is returned; it is matched to the order and the reception; a gap blocks; once matched, it moves to “spent” and goes to accounting; the payment itself is made with the company's means, outside this guide.
«The approval chain is written once, by threshold and cost centre, and played by the code: the station not required is skipped, the station required cannot be bypassed.»
One purchase request: approval chain, committed budget, generated order
The figure follows a 486,000-dinar request for two hours forty-four. Nobody chose who had to sign: the rule did.
The chain: the workshop lead approves up to 100,000 dinars; this amount exceeds it, his station is skipped; the manager approves up to 500,000 and receives the request on his phone with the quote and the envelope; top management, above 500,000, is not required. The manager approves at 11:20 with a reason, replacement, and the signature is logged. Had he not answered within 48 hours, the written delegation would have taken over, and the request would not have stayed blocked during his trip. The envelope: workshop maintenance, fourth quarter, 2,400,000 dinars; 1,310,000 spent on matched invoices, 420,000 committed by open orders, 486,000 for this request; 184,000 remain, 7.7 percent, and the alert below 10 percent goes to the manager with the approval.
The order: generated at 11:24, numbered, with the referenced supplier, sent by WhatsApp and as PDF, acknowledged at 11:31; the expected date, 25 November, comes from this supplier's measured lead time on its last deliveries, not from its promise. What the supplier knows: that its invoice must quote this number, or it will come back. What was not retyped: the request line became the order line, then the reception line, then the matched invoice line; one record, four states. Amounts, thresholds and names are a constructed example.
The quarter by cost centre: spent, committed, pending
The figure is the manager's board: for each envelope, three figures against a budget, and the number of invoices that arrived without an order.
The bars: spent, matched invoices; committed, open orders not yet invoiced; pending, submitted requests not yet approved; all three against the budget line. Marketing is over with its pending requests: they are blocked until a manager's decision, who may raise the envelope, refuse, or escalate to top management, by written rule. Supplies are at 92 percent with a month left: the alert has gone out. Invoices without an order: four over the quarter, returned to the supplier with an automatic message asking for the order number; the lead who bought by phone must create an after-the-fact request, signed, visible on the board as such.
Approval time: 1.9 days median from submission to last signature, also read per approver, because a manager who takes five days blocks the workshop as much as a budget does. Where the figures come from: every request, approval, order, reception and invoice is an event; aggregates are recomputed every night by a background job as in the background jobs guide and land in the manager's dashboard with their definition beside them. In a group of companies, each company has its envelopes and its chain, as in the multi-company guide. Cost centres, budgets and amounts are a constructed example.
«The envelope is consumed at approval, not at invoice: spent, committed, pending, available, recomputed at every request, and an overrun that shows the same day.»
Six real situations, and what the application does
Each row is a sentence heard in a company where several people buy, and the answer is a rule, not a manager who signs everything.
The lead bought by phone: the invoice arrives without an order number and goes back; the lead creates an after-the-fact request, which follows the chain and stays marked as such; at the third purchase without an order, the board shows it. The approver is on leave: the written delegation takes over after the delay, and approval happens from the phone, while travelling, offline if needed. Nobody knows what is left: the envelope shows spent, committed, pending and available, recomputed at every request, with an alert below the written threshold.
An unknown supplier is paid: a supplier is referenced, with its details and a photographed bank identifier, and approved before its first order; an invoice from an unreferenced supplier has no order, hence no payment. The invoice says 12, the order said 10: three-way matching blocks the gap; either a credit note, or an additional order approved by the chain, never a payment of 12 without looking. Small cash purchases vanish: an expense claim with a receipt photo, cost centre and written cap, approved by the same chain; or a till paid-out with a reason, as in the cash sessions guide.
Putting purchasing under rules in 2027, in weeks
Seven weeks, the first without code, and two for the request and the approval, because the budget, the order and the matching are only readings of an approval given by the rule.
- What the manager sees: the requests waiting for him, with the quote and the envelope; every morning, per cost centre, spent, committed, pending, available; returned invoices; after-the-fact purchases.
- What the leads no longer do: buy by phone, wait for the manager's return, retype an order, guess what is left on the budget.
- What is measured: spent and committed per cost centre, approval time per station, invoices without order, invoice-order gaps, after-the-fact requests, real supplier lead time.
Week 1, rules: cost centres, amount thresholds, the chain per centre, delegations and their delay, the quarter's envelopes, the overrun rule, the expense claim cap, who references a supplier; with the manager, without code. Weeks 2 and 3, request and approval: request from the phone with attachments, chain played by the code, notifications, delegation, signature, log, separation of requester and approver. Week 4, budget: envelopes per centre and period, committed at approval, computed available, alerts, block or escalation.
Week 5, order and suppliers: order generated and sent with acknowledgement, referenced suppliers with approval, expected measured lead time, additional orders. Week 6, reception and matching: reception linked to the order, three-way matching, no PO no pay, blocked gaps, accounting export of matched invoices. Week 7, measurement: spent and committed per centre, approval time per approver, invoices without order, gaps, after-the-fact requests, Monday review.
- Who writes the approval chain, and can it change?
- The manager, in the rules, by amount threshold and cost centre, with delegations and their delay; it changes without development, and every change is logged with its date. A request keeps the chain in force at the time of its submission; the rule is not changed to let a request through.
- What happens when the envelope is exceeded?
- What the written rule says: block the request, escalate to the next station, or simply alert, per cost centre. The manager may raise the envelope, with signature and reason logged; the increase is visible on the board. The envelope is consumed at approval, not at invoice: an overrun is not discovered three months later.
- Why “no PO, no pay”?
- Because an invoice without an order number has no request, no approval and no reception to match against, and paying it amounts to accepting any purchase after the fact. The invoice is returned to the supplier with an automatic message; the lead who bought creates an after-the-fact request, which follows the chain and stays marked. It is a known practice, not a legal rule, and this guide does not say what a law requires.
- And urgent purchases, a breakdown on a Sunday?
- The chain has a written emergency path: a threshold, one or two reachable people, an approval from the phone in minutes, and an after-the-fact request if the purchase had to happen first; everything is logged and visible on the board. An emergency is not an absence of rule, it is a shorter rule.
- Do stock purchases go through this too?
- The order proposal of the replenishment guide becomes a request that follows the same chain and consumes the depot's envelope; the order, the reception and the matching are the same. The difference is at the origin: a reorder-point computation instead of a need entered by a lead.
- How does the founder in France approve?
- From their phone, with the photographed quote, the envelope and the chain in view, in seconds, and offline if needed, the approval leaving when the network returns. They also see the board per cost centre every morning, as in the remote management guide; no more calling to find out.
- How long to set this up?
- Seven weeks in the typical calendar, the first without code and two for the request and the approval. A company that already has suppliers and matching from the replenishment guide takes less; a group with several companies, several chains and dozens of cost centres takes more, the time to write each one's rules.