Every department moves faster now.
Marketing is trialling a new SaaS tool before breakfast. HR is onboarding a one-off freelancer by lunch. Events are booking a venue before the end of the day.
And Procurement? It’s working hard to keep up with spending this fragmented and frequent without losing control or getting in the way of innovation.
With Soldo’s Mid-Year Spend Index 2025 finding that day-to-day spending within businesses is up 26% year-on-year, we’ve put together a list of common purchases that bury procurement in POs.
By identifying them, you can streamline approvals and free procurement to focus on strategic value.
Business purchases that need a simpler approval process
Traditional procurement processes can force teams to choose speed over compliance just to get their jobs done. Here are some reasons why teams within your business may be bypassing approved channels of purchasing to keep work moving at the pace the business demands.
- Spot buys or unplanned purchases
Imagine this: A team suddenly realises they need something to keep work moving – a replacement cable, a last-minute stock image, or an extra Zoom licence before a big client call. There’s no time to go through supplier onboarding or raise a PO. With no route for one-off tactical buys, the team bypasses established procurement processes. If they don’t, they could risk delaying a project, missing a deadline, or disappointing a customer.
Teams need a way to pay for small, urgent purchases that doesn’t create days of delay.
- Off-contract suppliers / one-time vendors
A department needs to buy from a supplier that isn’t on the approved list — maybe a local caterer for a client event, or a specialist freelancer for a short project. Traditionally, that means triggering a full supplier onboarding process, which can take weeks or even months. Faced with the choice between slowing the business or bypassing procurement, teams spend outside set policies.
Teams need a way to pay low-risk, one-off vendors without creating off-contract spend or budget leakage.
- Subscription spend
Marketing signs up for design software, HR trials a recruitment platform, IT buys an AI plug-in. These small charges often go straight on corporate or personal cards, then surface weeks later in expense claims or at reconciliation. Without visibility upfront, costs creep in, and recurring licence fees pile up unused.
Teams need to capture subscription spend at the source, giving procurement visibility before renewals and preventing waste.
- Team or project purchases
Several teams across the business need to make a series of small, related purchases throughout the span of a six-week project. That would mean creating Blanket POs. On paper, they reduce admin by removing the need for repeated POs. But in practice, they create new problems: spend visibility drops, reconciliation gets messy, and budget leakage creeps in as costs pile up against a single order.
Teams need real-time visibility of budgets over the entire lifecycle of a campaign.
Not every purchase requires (or suits) a long approval process.
If your procurement team is wrestling with everyday business purchases that don’t fit traditional processes, here are three steps you can take right now:
Map your high-frequency purchases
List out the categories where your teams make small, fast, or one-off purchases (SaaS subscriptions, freelancers, urgent spot buys, event costs). This will highlight the biggest pain points and help you focus on the processes that need modernisation first.
Define “fast lanes” with guardrails
Not every purchase needs weeks of approval. Create lighter-touch routes for low-risk, everyday spend. That could mean pre-approved budgets, capped spend categories, or single-use payment methods. The key is to balance speed for your teams with visibility for procurement.
Invest in visibility at the source
The earlier you capture spend, the less leakage you’ll see. Shift your controls upstream: set clear rules on who can buy what, track subscriptions before they auto-renew, and give teams tools that record spend in real time. This prevents surprises at month-end and keeps budgets intact.
Everyday spending is only going to grow — and the businesses that thrive will be the ones that remove bottlenecks without losing control. Start small, set up smart guardrails, and give your teams the flexibility to move fast with confidence.
