Guide: Procurement in Spendesk

Spendesk Procurement

Streamline your purchasing process from request to payment. Leverage customisable intake forms, automated approval workflows, contract management, and vendor onboarding to reduce communication overhead, accelerate approvals, and maintain full visibility over your procurement activities. Faster, more collaborative, and more controlled – from beginning to end.

Get Set Up

This step is for Procurement Managers and Account Owners.

Go to Procurement >Settings > Users & Roles
Assign Procurement Manager role to users who need full administrative access to configure processes and manage all procurement activities
Assign Library Editor role to users who need to manage vendor databases and contract libraries
Assign Requester role to all employees who need to create procurement requests

If you need help setting up Spendesk Procurement, contact us using the support@spendesk.com email, or the chat functionality in product.

Configuration

This step is for Procurement Managers.

Create Your First Procurement Process

Here you will build your procurement submission, approval and intake process. Multiple processes can be built overall to handle different use cases.

This step is for Procurement Managers.

Navigate to Procurement > Processes and click "New Process"
Select your process type:
- Purchase Request Process - For purchases that will result in a Purchase Order or Virtual Card
- Generic Request Process - For other requests like vendor onboarding, contract termination, etc.

Build Your Intake Form

This is the form your Requestors will need to fill out to submit a Procurement request. Multiple forms can be created to cover different use cases.

Start by clicking on Request Form Tab, the first 3 steps are not configurable (Quote Upload, Vendor Selection and Purchase Details). You can customise your intake form to meet your company requirements:

Add Steps - these are the stages the requestor will need to go through to submit a request.
- For example: Security Review, Software Information Details, Data Review, Benchmark Questions
Then add Fields - inside of the Steps you then add your fields. These are question types which prompt the requestor to give you the information you need. Fields include:
- Text, Text Area, Number, Date
- Single Select, Multi Select
- Boolean (Yes/No)
- Document upload
- Spendesk fields (Vendor, Cost Center, Expense Category, etc.)
Set Mandatory Fields - Use the “Mandatory” toggle to mark fields as required
Add conditional logic - “Add conditions” to Fields which should only appear when certain criteria is met. You can set up the criteria using the dropdown provided.

Note: The "Amount" condition in Spendesk Procurement is based on annualised spend commitment, including taxes, and is always calculated in your organisation's currency.

Build Your Approval Workflow

Approval workflows are built per intake form and can be edited in the Workflow Tab by any Procurement Manager and publish (new edited version will be available only for new request created after this edition).

Add New Task(s) to capture your full Procurement workflow. Tasks are optional and can be added to suit your process.
Go to the Workflow tab
Click on the + symbol where you want the task to fit in the flow
Select your Approval tasks from:
- Approval - Standard approval from managers, department heads, or teams
- Vendor Onboarding - Collect vendor information directly into the system via the vendor portal
- Validate Vendor Information - Have a Controller review and validate the creation of a new Spendesk Core* Invoice Supplier
- Purchase Outcome - Create Purchase Orders or Virtual Cards automatically (already present on Purchase Request Process)
  - You can activate automated PO/card creation when this task is reached if all the mandatory has been provided during the request. Activate the toggle to enable this.

Store Contract & Documents - Archive contracts with key data (already present on Purchase Request Process)

*Spendesk Core refers to your main Spendesk platform "app.spendesk.com"

Set Task Assignees:

Specify who needs to take action for each of the tasks created to be completed.

Individual assignation (specific person)
Relative assignation (Requester's manager, Cost Center Owner, Department Head, etc.)
Team assignation (create custom teams for Legal, IT, Finance, etc.)

Add Task Conditions - Trigger tasks based on amount, vendor type (new or existing),vendor status (active or toReview), expense category, or any intake form answer

Configure Task Forms - Collect additional information from approvers during their review

Set Lead Times - Define expected completion timeframes with automatic reminders

Procurement Processes Advanced Settings

Reapproval conditions: Set Amount Increase Rate that will re-trigger some of the process approval task (to be selected)
- Set your increase %
- Choose which tasks would need to be re-triggered if the percentage is exceed
Purchase outcomes: Select Purchase outcome that can be use for this process among PO/Card
- You can activate automated PO/card creation when this task is reached and if all the mandatory has been provided during the request. Activate the toggle to do so.
Contract Renewal: Set up a Renewal Process to manage contracts that are expiring. Find out more here.

For more details on building your Approval Workflows, visit the Processes help center article.

Submission

Creating a Procurement Request

This step is for all employees (Requesters).

Click New Request > Procurement Request
Select the appropriate request type based on your purchase policy
Upload a quote or contract - Spendesk AI will automatically extract and pre-fill information including line items
Complete all required fields in the intake form
Add supporting documents as needed
Review and submit your request

The request will automatically route to approvers based on the configured workflow.

Tracking Request Status

Go to Procurement > Requests to view all your requests
You can add custom column and filter to find a selection of your requests
Click into any request to see:
- Workflow Viewer - Visual representation of approval progress
- Request Form - All submitted information
- Comments - Communication between stakeholders
- Documents - All attached files
- Purchase Details - PO and agreement information
- Vendor Details - Supplier information and contacts
- Audit Trail - Complete history of all changes

For more information, visit the Create and Manage Requests help center article.

Approvals

Managing Your Approval Queue

This step is for all Task Assignees and Approvers.

Navigate to Procurement > Inbox to see all pending tasks assigned to you
Click on any approval to review the full request details

Approving Requests

Review all request information and supporting documents
Complete any required task form fields
Add comments if clarification is needed
Click Approve to move the request forward, or Reject with a reason (Rejection is definitive and will end this procurement request entirely.)

Multi-Role Approval Optimisation: If you have multiple approval tasks to complete for the same request, you are able to approve them all at once, saving you time. For instance if your workflow contains a manager approval and a cost center approval and the approver is the same for both, the user will be prompted to “Approve all tasks”.

Approval Task Reminders

Task assignee’s will receive automatic email or slack(if activated) notifications when new tasks are assigned to them
- Get reminders 1 day before and 1 day after the task due date
- Receive alerts if amount changes require re-approval

For more information, visit the Approvals help center article.

Vendor Management

View your Vendor Database

This step is for Procurement Managers and Library Editors.

Navigate to Procurement > Vendors to access your centralised vendor database
View an overview of key procurement information:
- Vendor Name and Primary Category (editable)
- Active Contracts and Purchase Orders
- Risk Level and Criticality Level (editable)
- Vendor Status (Approved, Active, Blocked) (editable)
- Primary Department (editable)

Note - In Procurement, only Procurement details are editable. Invoice supplier banking details and identifiers are only editable by Account Owner or Controllers in Spendesk Core > Settings > Account Payable. A link is directly clickable on the vendor profile page to be redirect to this page.

Adding and Managing Vendors Information

You can either manually add vendor information, or collect vendor information from vendors directly using the Vendor Portal (only trigger from a purchase request).

Add Vendors Manually

Click + Add Vendor to manually create a new vendor profile
Complete vendor information including:
- Description and website
- Address and VAT number
- Vendor contacts
- Risk and criticality assessment

Vendor Fields in Requests: You can collect vendor information directly in procurement requests by adding vendor fields to your intake forms or approval tasks.

Vendor self-serve Onboarding via Vendor Portal

What is the vendor portal? The vendor portal is used to onboard a new vendor during the Request process. Within the Vendor Portal suppliers access their onboarding form(s) to provide the information chosen by you directly into the platform.

Vendor Portal Configuration

Procurement Manager can configure a procurement workflow that use vendor portal to collect data from any vendor contact.

Add a Vendor Onboarding task to your approval workflow
- Vendor Onboarding task works like other task, procurement manager can add as many form fields he needs to collect answers from a vendor contact.
- Vendor Onboarding task assignation works as follow
  - The primary vendor contact (provided by the requester in the request form or during the request by any stakeholder in the vendor tab) will be the task assignee

Add a vendor contact to your request

In order to send the vendor portal to a vendor contact, the vendor contact details need to be filled out.

By the requester:
- Add a vendor contact in the request form when configurating your workflow.
- The requester will need
If you add vendor contact field in the request form, requester will be able to provide this contact or you’ll have to add this contact before sending the vendor portal to the vendor from the request page (Share Vendor Portal)

Vendor Experience (Vendors Only)

The primary vendor contact will a receive an email from Spendesk with a link to access vendor portal and complete his form(s)

Vendors complete forms directly in the vendor portal to provide:
- Business information
- Banking details
- Security and compliance certificates
- Custom surveys (IT, CSR, etc.)

Information is automatically stored in the secure vendor profile upon request completion

Vendor Synchronisation:

Vendors created in Spendesk Core (Accounts Payable) automatically sync to Procurement.
Purchase Orders created from procurement requests automatically create suppliers in Core.
Validate Vendor Information Task allows a controller to review Vendor information and Banking Details and to store this vendor as a Spendesk Invoice Supplier.

For more information, visit the Suppliers/Vendors help center article.

Contract Management

Creating and Storing Contracts

This step is for Procurement Managers and Library Editors.

Navigate to Procurement > Contracts
Click + New Contract
Fill in contract information:
- Contract name and description
- Start date, end date, and notice date
- Total contract value
- Auto-renewal status
- Business owner
Upload the contract file
Click Save

Automatic Contract Storage: Contracts can be automatically stored from approved procurement requests when using the "Store Contract & Documents" task type.

At Onboarding: Ask your CSS to upload your contracts list to our csv template. This can then be uploaded to automatically configure your contract table.

Contract Status

Contracts automatically update their status based on dates:

Not Started - Today is before the start date
Active - Today is between start and end date
Expired - Today is after the end date
Terminated - Manually set before the end date

Contract Views and Access

There are 5 contract views:

Active - All currently active contracts
Upcoming Renewal - Contracts with end/notice dates within 4 months
Renewal in Progress - Contracts with active renewal requests
Archive - Expired or terminated contracts
Organisation Contracts - Every contracts , Available to all users (read-only, without sensitive data)

For Access and Permission, you can refer to Roles & Permissions

For more information, visit the Contracts help center article.

Renewals & Alerting

Managing Contract Renewals

This step is for Business Owners and Procurement Managers.

Navigate to Procurement > Contracts > Renewals tab
View upcoming renewals with key information:
- Renewal deadline (notice date or end date)
- Total contract value
- Auto-renewal status
- Renewal status (None, In Progress, Renewed, Not Renewed)

Renewal Alerts

Business Owners and Procurement Managers receive automatic renewal reminders:

on the first alert renewal date (4 months before the renewal deadline if prefilled in the contract final step of the procurement request)
on the second alert renewal date (1 month before the renewal deadline if prefilled in the contract final step of the procurement request)

Alerts are sent via email and Slack with a direct link to create a renewal request

Using Renewal Workflow

Renewal Process Configuration

A renewal request is created using the Renewal Process workflow created earlier

Procurement manager can use one of the active procurement processes as the standard renewal process

It works the same way as other processes, it should be a purchase process and if you select it as the standard renewal process the Request Form will be prefilled using information from the current contract.
Configuration
- You need to set one of your active process as THE renewal process:
- Processes > Process_X>Advanced Settings>Contract Renewal

Create Renewal Request

Click Create Renewal Request from the contract page (or renewal alert notification)
- Go to Contracts
  - Open Upcoming Renewal Tab (Contracts with end date in the 4 coming months)
  - Open any Contract by clicking on the table row
  - Click on Create Renewal Request

The intake form is pre-filled with previous contract data
- For instance, if I have a 12k EUR contract with Pigment starting 1st of January 2025 and ending 31th of December 2025. If I’m creating a renewal request, intake form will be filled with this data (vendor= Pigment, amount=12k EUR, start date= 01/01/2026, end date=21/12/2026, custom fields prefilled).
The request follows your configured renewal approval workflow

For more information, visit the Renewal and Alerting help center article.

Purchase Outcomes

Generating Purchase Orders

This step is automatically triggered when a request reaches the Purchase Outcome task.

When a procurement request is approved and the payment method is Purchase Order:

Task assignee can add line items with quantities and prices
Click Finalise Purchase Outcome
If the Procurement Manager sets this task as “Auto Creation = ON” and all mandatory fields have been provided, then an approved Purchase Order is automatically created in Spendesk Core and no further approval is needed
If any mandatory fields are missing, the task assignee will need to open the task, fill the missing fields and complete the PO/Card creation first before a PO/card can be created.

Generating Virtual Cards

When the payment method is Virtual Card:

Select card type (Single-use or Subscription)
Review and confirm card details
Click Finalise Purchase Outcome
A Virtual Card request is created in Spendesk Core
Card follows any additional approval workflow configured in Core (if applicable)
Requester receives the card once approved and uses this to pay the vendor

Payment Method Configuration: Procurement Managers can customise which payment methods are available per process (PO only, Card only, or both with requester choice).

For more information, visit the Create and Manage Requests help center article.

Tracking & Reporting

Procurement Savings

This step is for Procurement Managers. Log your savings in any request to monitor your procurement savings in your savings dashboard. This is a key tool to report on the savings you’ve made for your business through your procurement management.

Log Savings in Requests:

Open any procurement request
Navigate to Negotiation - Price History
Add each new quoted price from the vendor
The request amount updates with each new price (including taxes)
Final savings are calculated automatically: Savings = Final Price - Base Price

Classify Savings:

Cost Savings (Hard Savings) - Direct cost reductions
Cost Avoidance (Soft Savings) - Prevented cost increases

Recognition Period:

Once at start date - 100% allocated to the start date
Contract duration based - Allocated proportionally over the contract period

Viewing Savings Dashboard

Navigate to Procurement > Dashboard
View savings by:
- Total savings per year/month
- Savings type (Cost Savings vs. Cost Avoidance)
- Department
- Purchase category

Export Savings Data: Use the Request Export feature to create custom reports with all savings data.

For more information, visit the How to Track Procurement Savings help center article.

Top Tips for Smarter Procurement

Use AI-Powered Document Extraction

Upload quotes and contracts to have Spendesk AI automatically extract and pre-fill:

Vendor information
Pricing and line items
Contract dates and terms
Payment details

This can save up to 80% of manual data entry time.

Set Up Conditional Workflows

Create smart approval workflows that route requests based on:

Spend amount (annualized)
Vendor risk level
Purchase category
Department or cost center
Custom intake form answers

This ensures the right stakeholders review requests without creating bottlenecks.

Leverage the Vendor Portal

Save time collecting vendor information by using vendor onboarding tasks:

Vendors complete forms directly in the portal
No back-and-forth emails needed
Information is automatically stored and validated
Supports multiple forms for different requirements (IT, Legal, Compliance)

Create Teams for Specialized Reviews

Set up teams for common approval groups:

Legal team for contract reviews
IT Security for software purchases
Finance for budget validation
Compliance for regulated purchases

Team members can self-assign or reassign tasks for better workload distribution.

Use Renewal Alerts to Stay Ahead

Receive automatic reminders 4 months and 1 month before renewals (if not edited)
Launch renewal requests directly from the alert
Pre-filled forms speed up the renewal process
Track renewal status to avoid unwanted auto-renewals