Purchase control is one of those things that feels small until it’s not. It’s the foundation for managing company spend, keeping cash flow in check, and making sure your team doesn’t spend three days tracking down a single lost receipt. And yet, for a lot of small businesses, it’s a total mess.
Purchasing is about getting the right stuff at the right time from the right suppliers for a fair price without blowing up your budget or your supplier relationships. Throw in approvals, payment terms, shipping costs, sustainability concerns, and maybe a dash of “I know a guy” supplier loyalty, and suddenly it’s chaos.
How much time is your team wasting on the purchase order process? How many errors are slipping through the cracks? Statistically, 1 in 10 purchases has a mistake, and that adds up fast when you’re running a seven or eight-figure operation.
If any of this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Purchase control doesn’t have to be a nightmare, but it does need attention. Here’s how to take the chaos and turn it into a system that actually works.
- What exactly is purchase control?
- Why purchase control feels like a nightmare?
- 4 steps to simplify the purchase order process
- How to make purchase control simple for small businesses
- Ready to take the hassle out of company purchasing?
What exactly is purchase control?
Purchase control is the process of managing and regulating business purchases to ensure they align with the organization’s budget, policies, and operational needs. It involves overseeing the procurement process, setting clear spending guidelines, and ensuring effective supplier management.
The key goals of purchase control include:
- Avoid overspending. Keeping purchases within budget to protect cash flow.
- Improve the purchase order management process. Simplifying workflows for creating, approving, and tracking purchase orders for better efficiency.
- Maintain adequated proof of compliance. Adhering to company policies, payment terms, and regulatory standards.
- Manage supplier relationships. Improving communication and timely payments to build trust and ensure smooth operations.
- Maximize cost savings. inventory levels, with any negotiated purchasing policies and financing to reduce expenses.
Why purchase control feels like a nightmare?
Purchasing should be simple, but too often, it’s anything but. Purchase requisitions get misplaced or lost. Double purchases, wrong items, or weak product choices disrupt workflows. Managers with packed schedules rarely have time to oversee every purchase order creation or investigate where things go wrong.
From juggling payable workflows to missing out on payment discounts, the lack of a streamlined process can lead to inefficiencies and missed opportunities. Selecting vendors and managing relationships with suppliers becomes reactive instead of strategic. In addition, the chaos of inventory management and the stress multiply quickly.
Sound familiar? Here are a few ways to tell if purchase control might be what your business needs:
- Are more than 20% of your suppliers redundant or inactive?
- Is your actual spending more than 10% over budget on indirect costs?
- Do over 5% of supplier invoices require troubleshooting or clarification?
- Are more than 5% of purchases made without proper management approval?
- Do you struggle to analyze spending by vendor, cost center, or commodity?
If any of this resonates, it’s time to explore how digital tools like ProcurementExpress.com can simplify your processes, optimize purchase order creation, and make managing your purchasing process far less of a headache.
4 steps to simplify the purchase order process

Simplifying the purchase order process can save time, reduce errors, and make your operations more efficient. Here’s how to break it down into four easy steps:
- Set up budgets and invite colleagues: Define budgets for departments and onboard colleagues into the system to align the purchasing process with supply chain needs and spending limits.
- Employees submit purchase requests: Employees can easily submit purchase requests through a centralized system, kicking off streamlined approval workflows that eliminate manual back-and-forth.
- Managers get notified: Managers receive real-time notifications to review and approve requests, ensuring the approval workflows keep moving while maintaining compliance and oversight.
- Reports available for review online: Detailed reports are accessible online, providing insights into purchase order activity, accounts payable and accounts receivable trends, and supply chain efficiency for better decision-making.
How to make purchase control simple for small businesses
Effective purchase control often relies on procurement software (sometimes called purchasing software) for real-time visibility into business spending, as well as structured approval processes.
For small businesses, this ensures operational efficiency, improves supplier relationships, and supports long-term cost savings.
Purchase control should be easy
One sure way to control purchases and help your company achieve sustainable growth through efficient spend management is by introducing Procurementexpress.com Purchase Control Software to your projects. It controls the spending while you focus on other aspects of your project, like unforeseen pitfalls and personnel management.
How does the software achieve this? Well, these are a few ways:
- You never have to wonder what has been spent on what and by whom.
- Reports are updated in real-time and can be downloaded at any time.
- You can implement vendor management – so your team can’t use suppliers you don’t like.
- You can view the remaining budget per project before purchases are approved.
- You can set up custom fields to report what’s important to your company.
- It is fast with a load of functionality under the hood
- It is adaptable with tailored reports and customizable PDFs
- It is straightforward and easy to use, and any one of your staff members can master it in a few minutes, so all your departments can spend responsibly
Don’t take our word for it
The easiest way to control spend in any sized organization, and even easier for all staff and employees to learn and understand!” – Luke Moon, Chief Financial Officer, RB Sellars
Great simple tool for budgeting purposes. It works well for the reasons we put it in place, which was overspend. So at least now we can hold people accountable for their spend behavior.” – Monica Mathis, General Manager, Harmoney Limited
I have been using Procurementexpress.com for some time now and find it so simple and easy to use. It is practical, quick, effective, and you can keep an eye on all your information at the touch of your keyboard, Ipad or whatever you’re using. It’s clear and precise. I enjoy the experience of using Procurementexpress.com for my work.” – Barry Olsen, Geiger Group
Manage approval processes on the go
Managers and executives are bouncing from one meeting to the next. They hardly have time to grab a cup of coffee, let alone approve all the POs needed in a day. Unfortunately, you can’t purchase anything if you do not have the relevant manager’s signature for approval. Managers also can’t keep track of what each employee is up to when they are not around.
Getting approvals for anything in a company can be very frustrating. In order to get a signature on a purchase order form, you literally have to stalk the related manager, and sometimes, it still has to go through more than one department before the purchase can finally be made.
With Procurementexpress.com Purchase Control Software, all purchases are run through a set approval routing process, whereby managers who make the decisions can approve all purchases with the click of a button.
The mobile functionality is great when the manager is on the go and he/she is no longer tied their desk. You can see everything instantly and can approve any purchase with a click of a button. It also has the following amazing features:
- Allows you to review all purchases before they happen
- Approval rules can also be set per budget and project
- Remembers everything so you don’t have to
- Instantly sends you progress reports
- Crew members or managers can load POs from site
- The app is available on Android and iOS applications
Don’t take our word for it
We got Procurementexpress.com to handle the approval process for a 150-employee sized company. We were looking for ease of use and fast implementation. Since the adoption of Procurementexpress.com we have been able to increase the control over purchase approvals (we have not overrun budget since then), we have eliminated bureaucratic forms that required physical signatures (and most times would be incomplete) and we have streamlined the approval process” – Miguel Fernandez CFO, Dinda
As a customer of Procurementexpress.com, I believe it is an invaluable part of my day to day business and is used by all employees to purchase items for my office and for jobs. It truly makes my job easier and keeps things organized and easy to follow up and track down when needed for my day to day operations. I run a small HVAC company and it simply works great for us. Definitely, recommend this for all companies who need to keep track of their outgoing expenses and make purchases a process that is not hard to use. And being able to use it as a desktop or mobile version makes life easy for my Techs out in the field. And as a business owner being able to check and restrict purchase amount keeps my guys from overspending without prior approval which keeps my expenses down and on track for my P&L. In short great program and easy to use. Keep up the good work guys.” – Robert Langton, co-owner Air Authority LLC.
Keep important details on the record
With every project budget, there are a lot of purchases that have to be made, and mistakes like buying the wrong sizes are not uncommon. Therefore, it is important to know what is happening in and around the project at all times.
If you are like me, you work even after leaving your desk. Lists of things to do the next day run through your head, and sometimes, in the shower, you remember that one email you forgot to send. You even dream of doing it first thing in the morning, but as soon as you get to the office, ‘life’ happens – you are bombarded with unforeseen pitfalls on a project or last-minute meetings, and your list just keeps growing. Having so many things to do can make it hard for you to manage your time efficiently.
Procurementexpress.com knows what you have to face every day and has developed software that does all the work so you can quickly get the purchase done with the following features:
- Each time a purchase is made a step-by-step command is recorded on the PO with a time and date
- Comments can be made, and steps can be corrected right away if needed
- Same-day company-wide implementation
- Intuitive, no training required
Don’t take our word for it
Good value for the money. We use it for purchasing control and approval. It does do budget tracking and provides good tools for proposing a big ticket expense, gathering information, organizing discussions about options, and then recording what was bought, when it was paid for, when it was delivered, etc.” – Roland Alden, Project Manager, ioet Inc.
Using Procurementexpress.com as a purchase ordering tool has been very easy from the get go. It is simple and uncomplicated and user-friendly. It doesn’t take very long to create a purchase order so it saves me time. Overall a good experience.” Dwight Uyeno, SPUD
Ready to take the hassle out of company purchasing?

Procurementexpress.com is a user-friendly Purchase Order platform. It helps us track our expenses and maintain a chain of approval. Additionally, their staff is extremely responsive and helpful.” – Emily Stone, Operations Coordinator, DC Scholars Community Schools
Being in control of your purchases is not just having the power in your hands. It also helps you turn a profit at the end of the day.
Stay on top of every aspect of the project. Try Procurementexpress.com for free today!
Plus, the Procurementexpress.com support team is available 24 hours a day and offers concierge and bespoke development services when needed.