Purchasing

What it is

The two halves of buying something, in one app.

The first half is an approval: anyone can ask to spend money, but who has to say yes depends on how much it costs. The second half is the part that usually falls off the end — the order actually arriving, the invoice actually matching, and somebody knowing which of the two is still outstanding. Most tools do one or the other. Here they are the same rows.

What you get

A requisition that routes itself on the number in it. A requester describes what they need, the estimated total, the budget code, and attaches whatever quotes they already have. Their department confirms the need. Then a Rule reads the estimated total: under $1,000 goes straight to procurement, $1,000 to $25,000 needs finance, and $25,000 and above needs an executive first. Nobody chooses the path; the amount does.

A real send-back, not a reply-all. Both department review and finance review can return a requisition to the requester for more information. They revise it and it comes back down the same chain, with the whole exchange on the record.

A vendor register the spend rolls up into. Vendors carry their status, their payment terms and who to talk to. Procurement picks the vendor when they issue the PO, and their Committed Spend adds itself up from the orders — no second spreadsheet, no month-end reconciliation to find out what you have promised somebody.

An orders board that starts where the Flow stops. The Flow ends at PO Issued. What happens next is not an approval and should not pretend to be one: the order is placed, the goods arrive, the invoice lands, the line closes. That is a column on the row, moved by dragging a card — so an order can go backwards when a delivery is short, without anyone re-authoring a process.

An Approvals page for whoever has to say yes. The reviewer opens the app and sees what is waiting on them and on their team, with a 48-hour clock on department and finance review. Nothing to search for, nothing to forward.

A record page that holds both halves. Open a requisition and you see what was asked for, every approval that has happened on it and who owes the next one, the purchase order raised against it, and where that order got to.

A dashboard that answers the two money questions. What is still open, and what has been committed on purchase orders.

A status the requester can read. Their own list says *Being reviewed*, *With finance*, *Being ordered* or *PO Issued*, in those words, rather than the name of the Step somebody else is standing on.

The pattern worth stealing

Approval state belongs to the Flow; everything after it belongs to a column on the row. The Flow writes its own status as it runs and stops when the decision is made. Fulfilment is a plain select column a person moves, which is why the board can go backwards, skip a state, or be corrected without touching the Flow at all.

Who uses this

• Software subscriptions and licence renewals
• Equipment and hardware purchases
• Services and contractor engagements
• Capital expenditure with an executive signature on it

What it expects from your workspace

Nothing. The four reviewers arrive as placeholders — Department Heads, Finance, Executive Team and Procurement — which you swap for real teams before publishing. Change the two thresholds to your own delegated limits and the routing follows; they are numbers in a Rule, not code.