Create a Procurement Process

To set up a procurement process for your company, navigate to Processes and click on "new Process."

Select your process type

You can now select a process type when you create a new process.

We have currently two process type to create two request type:

Purchase Request Process:
- This type of Process is a Process to create purchase request
- This Process contains
  - In the Request Form (First Form for the Requester)
    a default quote upload step (that can use AI to extract and pre-fill) purchase request information
    a default Vendor Selection step
    a default Purchase details step where requester will provide pricing information and analytic information (in the Request, requester will the whole purchase order or virtual card)
  - In the Workflows
    a default Purchase Outcome task that allow to create a Purchase Order or a Virtual Card when the purchase request is approved (in the task, task assignee will the whole purchase order or virtual card)
    Purchase Order and Virtual Card will be created in Spendesk Core
- You can add as many additional custom request form step and fields and workflow step
Generic Request Process:
- This type of Process aim to support every other type of request : vendor onboarding, contract termination, …
- This process doesn’t contains Purchase Details fields and doesn’t support Purchase Order/Virtual Card creation
- You can use this Generic Process to collect data and documents (contract and vendor documents)
  
  Build your intake form

Next, you can add Step and Fields to customize your procurement intake form.

Intake Form Steps

Steps are separate pages. You can set up a Step Title and Step Description. Step Description can be very useful to add link to internal documentation for instance.

Spendesk Vendor Step - allow employees to select from a dropdown of existing vendors in your company or add new vendor (this Step is mandatory)

Intake Form Field

You can specify the question type from the following options:

Basic Question Type

📜 Basic Question Type are custom fields you can add to your procurement intake:

Text - free form text box
Text Area long form text box
Single Select radio button select of custom options
Multi Select - select multiple options from list
Document - field to allow for upload of any relevant files for the procurement request
Number - field to allow input of numbers
Date - field to allow input of date
Boolean - yes/no question

Spendesk Question Type

📜 Spendesk Question Type are standard fields you can add yo your requests. Some fields refer to Purchase Request Fields, Purchase Order Fields or Contract Fields.

Conditionally ask questions to streamline the intake process

You can also add conditional questions by clicking on the "+ New condition block" dropdown on each question. Choose a preceding question (type: Boolean, Single Select, Multi Select) and set the logic to conditionally ask questions to your employees. Condition can also be added on Intake Step.

Use the search to find the question on which you want to add the condition.

Zoom on Amount condition

Please note, The Amount condition in Spendesk Procurement is based on annualized spend commitment, including taxes, and is always calculated in your organization’s currency.

For recurring purchases, the annualized spend is calculated by multiplying the monthly amount by 12.
For Purchase Order Requests (POs) with a duration of less than 12 months, the total amount is not annualized.
For one-off purchases or Purchase Requests without a payment frequency, the condition applies directly to the provided amount without additional calculations.

Build your procurement workflow

For approvals, you’ll need to set up your procurement workflow.

Note, the procurement workflow will only apply to procurement process it was created within.

You can use your intake questions to conditionally route approvals (e.g. If vendor has access to sensitive business information, loop in IT & Security).

Task Types

In a procurement process, you can add different types of tasks:

Task Type	Description
Approval Task	This task allows to approve a purchase/vendor, collect datas from approvers
Vendor Onboarding	This task allows to validate a vendor and fill general and bank informations. The vendor will be created and validated in Spendesk's Accounts Payable page for Controllers.
Create Purchase Order	This task allows to create an approved purchase order in Spendesk.
Store Contract & Documents	This task allows to store contract with main data and store supporting documents (KBIS, SOC, …)

Create your first approval task

An approval task is a task that requires completion by an approver. The goal of the task could be to obtain approval, receive a review on specific fields (such as accounting fields for instance), undergo a full review (like an IT security review with its own internal form), or trigger action in another system (create purchase order in Spendesk).

Task Attribute	Description	Exemple	Comments
Task Assignee	Individual assignation or Team assignation	Requester’s manager, Legal Team
Task Lead Time	Number of days to complete the task	5 days	This is an indicative information. Notification will be sent to the approver if the task has not been finished within the lead time
Task Name	Name of the task	Legal Review
Task Description	Description of the task	Legal Team will review key contractual points before giving its approval	As for Intake Step Description, you can add external links into Task Description.
Task Form	List of fields that need to be filled by the approver	Co Marketing Clause, Auto Renewal Clause
Conditions	Conditions on which the task is triggered	If a Contract_need_to_be_signed is True
Task Relevant Informations	Relevant fields of the procurement request that are useful for the approvers	Amount, Contract Duration, Request Category, Request Signature Due Date

Task Assignation

Tasks can be assigned to an individual either through absolute assignment (for example, a person in particular) or relative assignment (such as the requester's manager).

List of Relative Assignation Available

Requester
Requester’s manager
Requester’s cost center owner
Requester’s Head of Department
Requester’s Department C-Level

Team assignation

In Spendesk Procurement, a PM can create Teams. These are custom groups that can be assigned to workflow tasks. If you assign a Team, the best practice is also to assign an assignee by default.

Request task assignation

When a request is submitted, any incomplete tasks can be reassigned. The PM can reassign tasks to anyone, the assignee can reassign tasks to anyone, and team members can reassign tasks to themselves.

Task Form

Task Form is working like Intake Form.

Allow approvers to review an Intake Form Field and update it

In Task Form, there is an additional capability : the ability to allow the approver to review and update an information given by the requester in the Intake Form.

To do that, PMs need to add an existing field in the Task Form by selecting a field from the section “Process Question Type”.

If we add several times the same fields in a process, every time assignees edit the answer the request fields is updated with this last value. You can follow the history of this fields with the request audit trail.

In this example, the Intake Form has a field “Volume Commitment” where the requester needs to write if there is any Volume Commitment in the contract and add comments.

PMs can add this field in the Legal Review Task Form, the approver (from the Legal Team) will see the Requester answers and will be able to edit the answers if needed.

Task Condition

Task Condition works like Intake Form Condition.

PMs can add conditions on Process Questions (Process Questions are the Questions that has been added in Intake Form or previous Steps Task Forms).

Click to open the Task, then Click on “+New condition block”.

💡 The best practice to find the Question is to use the search, for instance if you want to add a condition on the payment method, enter “payment” in search and find the right question.

Relevant Information for Task

In the Task, the “Approval Guidelines” section allows PM to configure a subset of relevant informations that can be useful for a specific approval task.

When PMs select these fields, these fields will be displayed as read only mode in the Request Data for Task for the approvers.

💡 If you want to let approvers check and update a field, use task form instead of this feature.

For instance, PM add these 4 fields as relevant fields to be monitored by IT Security Team in the “IT Review” Task Approval.

Customize Payment method

New feature available in Beta

In Procurement Process with Purchase Request Type, you can customize the payment method for your procurement process. By default, procurement requests will issue Purchase Orders on Spendesk but you can set it to a Virtual Card.

If Purchase Order and Virtual Card Purchase Outcomes are selected in a process, requester will be able to request the creation of a purchase order or a virtual card (single use or subscription) at the end of a procurement request.

Unsure of when to use a PO vs. Virtual card?

A Purchase Order requires invoices to be uploaded, and invoices go through a whole other set of approvals through invoice module (this is typically good for larger purchases or any spend you want to have centralized or reviewed by your AP/Finance team)
A Virtual Card is good for spend where you don't necessarily want to go through an approval - once approved, the requester will receive a card for the approved amount (this is typically good for smaller dollar amounts and/or when you really trust the requester)
- You can choose to set auto-approval on virtual card generation when generate from approved procurement request

What’s the difference between a “Virtual Card” Request and a “Procurement” request with a Virtual Card Payment method?

Virtual Card Request allow you to issue cards with simple approval workflow and spend limits
Procurement Request allow you to set up an automated procurement process with the flexibility to issue purchase orders or one-time virtual cards. Procurement requests populate in a new Procurement tab that provides visibility into each request, approval status, and purchase order. If an admin wants to issue a card off of procurement requests, admins have the flexibility to adjust and configure card controls after the request is received.

Configuration Tips

Duplicate existing process to fasten multiple process configuration

You can use Process duplication feature on your Processes page to duplicate an existing process and fasten your procurement process creation.
Click on the "duplicate" button on a given Process card.