An MRO procurement strategy is the set of rules for buying maintenance, repair and operations items. It decides which suppliers you use and which buying channel each part goes through. It also sets who approves what, and how the spend reaches your books.
This guide is for Controllers and the procurement and maintenance leads they work with. If you run more than one plant, the strategy must also cover emergency buys. Line-down purchases are where approvals get skipped. They are also why invoices arrive weeks later with no purchase order.
Key takeaways
- Start with a 12-month spend analysis by plant, supplier and category, so every later decision rests on your own numbers.
- Split MRO into four buying lanes (planned stock, repeat parts, line-down emergencies and large repairs) and give each lane its own channel and approval rule.
- Write the emergency path down before you need it: who can buy, up to what amount, from which suppliers, and how fast the purchase order has to exist afterwards.
- Tell MRO suppliers that an invoice without a PO number will not be paid, and give them a way to get a PO number by phone at 2 a.m.
- Treat every approved PO as committed spend by plant, so parts received before the invoice still reach month-end accruals.
- Measure the emergency share of MRO spend, the after-the-fact PO rate and invoices with no PO, plant by plant, every month.
What is MRO procurement, and what counts as MRO?
MRO stands for maintenance, repair and operations. MRO procurement is how a company buys the items that keep its plants and equipment running but do not become part of the finished product. Direct materials go into what you sell. MRO keeps the machines that make it working.
In a manufacturing plant, MRO usually falls into three groups:
- Maintenance: bearings, belts, filters, lubricants, seals and other parts replaced on a schedule.
- Repair: motors, gearboxes, pumps, controllers and other parts bought when something breaks.
- Operations: safety gear (PPE), fasteners, cutting tools, cleaning supplies and shop consumables.
Each item is cheap on its own, but there are thousands of them, bought often, by many people, across every plant. That mix of high volume, low unit cost and real urgency is why MRO needs its own strategy. For a fuller definition, see our MRO procurement glossary entry.
Why do emergency MRO buys break purchasing control across plants?
Picture a gearbox failing on Line 3 at Plant 2 at 2 a.m. on October 29. The maintenance supervisor calls the distributor the plant has used for years. He orders a replacement for $4,800 and agrees to $650 in overnight freight. He promises to send a PO number in the morning.
The part arrives at 9 a.m. and the line restarts by noon. Nobody raises the PO. The emergency is over, and the next one has already started.
Finance sees nothing until November 21. That day, a $5,450 invoice lands in accounts payable. It has no PO and no receiving record, only a note that says “per phone call with Mike.”
Your AP specialist spends a morning on detective work. She has to find out who Mike is and which plant he works at. Then she has to work out which asset the gearbox went into and which GL account it belongs to. By then October has closed. The expense sits in the wrong month, and Plant 2’s October accrual is short by $5,450.
This is not about one careless supervisor. Production urgency is a real reason to buy fast. At a single site, the Controller usually hears about it in the hallway.
Across three plants, each site builds its own habits. Each one has its own suppliers, its own idea of who may buy and its own meaning of “emergency.” Your purchasing rules cover planned orders. They say nothing about a breakdown at night, so the night shift writes its own rules.
The cost shows up in three places. First, you pay more per part, because emergency buys go to whoever can ship today, not the supplier with your negotiated price. Second, you lose time at month-end, because someone has to rebuild the story behind every unmatched invoice. Third, your numbers stay wrong until the invoice arrives, because spend that exists on the plant floor does not yet exist in your books.
Why does MRO purchasing control matter more in 2026 and 2027?
MRO prices and lead times now move faster than most annual budgets assume. Since April 6, 2026, U.S. Section 232 duties on steel, aluminum and copper apply to the full customs value of many imports. Before that, they applied only to the metal content.
As Distribution Strategy Group reported in April 2026, much of a typical MRO catalog is metal-heavy: fasteners, fittings, valves, bearings, couplings and cutting tools. The same report noted that MSC Industrial was passing on mid- to high-single-digit price increases from its suppliers. Supplier delivery times for MRO goods were also still longer than before the pandemic.
For a Controller, this raises the cost of an unapproved purchase. A distributor’s price can change between one order and the next. A part bought by phone, at whatever price is quoted, is hard to budget for. It is even harder to dispute once the invoice arrives.
Agreed prices, approved suppliers and a PO before the order show you a price change on the day it happens, while you can still question it. The tariff rules changed again in June 2026. Plants budgeting for 2027 should plan their controls for moving MRO prices, not for a stable year.
What does an MRO procurement strategy need to cover?
Most MRO strategy guides cover the same ground: fewer suppliers, standard parts, the right spares on the shelf and better data across sites. Those pieces matter, and a strategy for several plants needs all of them.
What the guides usually leave out is the control layer a Controller answers for. That layer covers who approves a purchase and how an emergency gets documented. It also makes sure every dollar reaches the right plant, account and month. The table below lists both halves.
| Strategy area | What it decides | Who owns it |
|---|---|---|
| Spend segmentation | Which MRO items are planned stock, repeat non-stock, emergency or large repairs | Maintenance and finance together |
| Supplier base | Which suppliers each plant may use, at which prices and service terms | Procurement or the Controller |
| Buying channels | Whether an item is bought through a blanket PO, a punch-out catalog, a standard requisition or the emergency path | Procurement |
| Critical spares | Which parts stay on the shelf because a stockout would stop a line | Maintenance and reliability |
| Approval rules | Who approves which amount at which plant, including at night and on weekends | Controller |
| Supplier rules | PO numbers on invoices, no PO no pay, emergency contacts and freight caps | Controller and AP |
| Month-end treatment | How received-but-not-invoiced parts are accrued and coded by plant | Controller |
| Measures | Emergency share, after-the-fact PO rate, invoices without a PO, catalog use | Controller |
The top half is where most MRO guides stop. The bottom half is the control layer this article focuses on.
How do you start an MRO procurement strategy with a spend analysis?
Start with the invoices you already have. Pull the last twelve months of MRO invoices from accounts payable. Then tag each one with five things:
- The plant that bought it.
- The supplier.
- The category, such as bearings, motors, PPE or cutting tools.
- Whether it was a planned buy or an emergency buy.
- Whether it had a PO before the invoice arrived.
This takes a few days in a spreadsheet, and it answers the questions the rest of your strategy depends on. You will see how many suppliers each plant uses, and which ones you pay only once or twice a year. That long list of rarely used suppliers is your tail spend. You will also see which categories go through emergency buys most often, and which plants send in the most invoices without a PO.
Those numbers become your baseline. They show where to set approval thresholds, which suppliers to keep, which parts to stock and which plant to start with. They also give you the starting point for the KPIs later in this guide.
How should you segment MRO spend into buying lanes?
Not every MRO purchase needs the same process. A box of nitrile gloves, a bearing for a known asset and a failed gearbox on a running line carry different risk. They also carry different urgency and different dollar amounts.
If all of them go through one approval queue, either the line slows down or people learn to skip the queue. The fix is a small number of buying lanes. Each lane gets its own channel and its own approval rule. That way, the controlled path is also the fastest path for each kind of purchase.
| Lane | Typical items | Buying channel | Approval rule |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Planned stock | Filters, lubricants, fasteners, gloves, belts kept on the shelf | Blanket PO with releases, or reorder from a punch-out catalog | Pre-approved within the blanket amount and the plant budget |
| 2. Repeat non-stock | Known parts for known assets, ordered a few times a year | Punch-out catalog or standard requisition | Auto-approve under a plant threshold, then route by amount |
| 3. Line-down emergency | A failed motor, gearbox or controller stopping production | Emergency PO from a pre-approved supplier | Named approver per plant, value cap, PO number issued before the supplier ships |
| 4. Large or unusual repairs | Rebuilds, outside contractors, items that may be capital | Standard requisition with quotes | Plant manager plus Controller; capital review if it meets your policy |
Your dollar thresholds will differ. The point is that each lane has one channel and one rule.
The situation should decide the lane, not the person buying. A short test works for most plants. If the line is stopped, or will stop within the shift, it is lane 3. If the item is on the standard parts list, it is lane 1 or 2. Anything else is lane 4, including a planned rebuild that someone wants to rush.
Write this test down. Without it, “emergency” grows to cover anything someone wants faster.
How should you source MRO suppliers and set emergency terms in advance?
Sourcing starts with the spend analysis. Keep the suppliers that deliver reliably at fair prices. Move one-off tail suppliers onto an approved supplier, or retire them. Fewer suppliers per category gives you more pricing power and fewer invoices to process.
Each plant usually has a few suppliers it trusts for breakdowns, and those relationships are worth keeping. What changes is that each one gets written terms before the next breakdown, not after the invoice. For every supplier a plant may call in an emergency, agree on four things:
- An after-hours contact who can take an order at night or on a weekend.
- The prices or discount you expect on the parts you buy most often.
- A cap on expedite and freight charges, above which someone must approve the extra cost.
- A rule that the supplier will not ship without a PO number.
Keep each plant’s approved supplier list in one system that finance can see. Plant 1 sees its approved suppliers, and Plant 2 sees its own. The Controller can see and audit all of them in one place.
This is also where you spot two plants buying the same bearing from different distributors at different prices. Then you can decide whether one agreement should cover both sites.
Example: Plant 2 agrees with its gearbox distributor that overnight freight above $400 needs a second approval, and that the distributor will not ship without a PO number. On October 29 the supervisor still gets the part by 9 a.m., but the order now carries a PO number and the freight decision is visible before it is spent.
How do critical spares and cross-plant stock reduce emergency buying?
Two habits cut emergency MRO buys more than any approval rule: keep a critical spares list for each plant, and check other plants’ stock before you buy. The cheapest emergency purchase is the one that never happens.
First, keep a short critical spares list for each plant. It covers parts whose failure stops a line and whose lead time is longer than the downtime you can accept. Those parts stay on the shelf. Review the list whenever an emergency buy repeats.
Second, check whether another plant has the part before any emergency purchase. A gearbox sitting at Plant 1 can reach Plant 2 faster and cheaper than an overnight order. That only works if someone can see Plant 1’s stock.
Preventive maintenance belongs in the same discussion. When the same part fails at the same plant every few months, the answer is usually a maintenance schedule, not a faster way to buy. Our guide to MRO inventory management covers how to set reorder points and decide what to stock.
What should an MRO approval matrix look like across plants?
An approval matrix decides who must say yes before money is committed. For MRO across several plants, it needs three dimensions: the plant, the amount and the lane.
It also needs a column for emergencies. The person who approves at night is usually not the person who approves planned purchases during the day. The example below is a starting design, not a recommendation for your thresholds.
| Amount | Planned and repeat MRO (lanes 1 and 2) | Line-down emergency (lane 3) | Large repairs (lane 4) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under $500 | Auto-approved within the plant budget | Shift maintenance lead | Plant maintenance manager |
| $500 to $5,000 | Plant maintenance manager | On-call plant manager by phone or mobile, PO issued immediately | Plant manager |
| $5,000 to $25,000 | Plant manager | On-call plant manager plus a notification to the Controller | Plant manager plus Controller |
| Over $25,000 | Plant manager plus Controller | Plant manager and Controller, reachable after hours | Plant manager, Controller and CFO; capital review |
Illustrative thresholds. Set your own by looking at last year’s MRO invoices per plant.
Three rules keep the matrix honest:
- Nobody approves their own request. The supervisor who places an emergency order cannot also approve it.
- No split orders. Splitting one purchase into smaller orders to stay under a threshold breaks policy. Set the system to flag several orders to the same supplier from the same person on the same day.
- Every approver has a named backup. If the matrix depends on one plant manager answering the phone at 2 a.m., people will bypass it the first night that manager does not answer.
What should an emergency MRO purchase procedure include?
An emergency purchase procedure sets out who can buy during a breakdown, what they must record and how fast the PO has to exist. Done well, it controls emergency MRO buys without slowing production.
An emergency rule is not meant to make maintenance wait. Its job is to create a record before the supplier ships. Then finance knows about the purchase the same day, not three weeks later.
A request takes about two minutes on a phone, and approval takes a few more. That is fast enough for almost any breakdown. It replaces the “I’ll send you a PO number tomorrow” promise that never gets kept.
What the emergency purchase request form must capture
- The plant and the asset or line that is down, so the cost lands on the right plant and can be tied to a repair history.
- The work order number from your maintenance system, if one exists, or a short description of the failure if it does not.
- The supplier, the part and the expected price, plus any expedite or freight charge as a separate line.
- The estimated downtime, which explains the urgency to anyone reviewing the purchase later.
- The GL account and cost center, defaulted from the plant and the item so the supervisor does not have to know accounting codes.
The timing rules
Two time limits make the emergency path work. First, the PO number must exist before the supplier ships. So the approver in the matrix must be reachable, and approval must work from a phone.
Second, a supervisor sometimes cannot raise a request in time, for example when the supplier’s truck is already on site. In that case, the supervisor enters an after-the-fact PO by the end of the next business day, with the same fields. The normal approver reviews it then. Anything later counts as a policy exception, and AP reports it instead of quietly fixing it.
How to stop the emergency path from becoming the normal path
Once a fast lane exists, some purchases will drift into it simply because it is fast. Watch three signals each month:
- Emergency share of MRO spend per plant. This shows whether one site uses the lane far more than the others.
- Repeat emergency buys of the same part at the same plant. These point to a spares or preventive maintenance problem that buying rules alone will not fix.
- Emergency requests placed outside real downtime. A Monday morning order for a part that failed on Friday means someone is using the lane for convenience.
Send each of these findings to the plant manager, not just to AP.
Emergency requests in ProcureDesk route to the approver for that plant and amount, and approvers can act from their phone. See an emergency MRO request go from phone to PO in a 20-minute demo →
How should no PO, no pay work with MRO suppliers?
A no PO, no pay policy means AP will not pay an invoice that lacks a valid purchase order. You tell suppliers this in writing before it takes effect.
For MRO, this rule closes the loop on everything above. It moves the job of chasing a PO number away from your AP team, to the supplier and the person who placed the order. It only works if a PO number is quick to get at any hour. That is why the emergency path comes first.
Roll it out in three steps:
- Send each approved MRO supplier a short notice. From a set date, every invoice must show a ProcureDesk or ERP purchase order number, and invoices without one will be returned.
- Give suppliers the after-hours contact at each plant who can raise an emergency request.
- Hold the line. When an invoice arrives without a PO, AP sends it back to the supplier and tells the plant, rather than paying it and fixing the paperwork later.
Here is a short notice you can adapt and send to each approved MRO supplier:
Sample no PO, no pay notice to MRO suppliers
Subject: Purchase order number required on all invoices from [date]
Dear [Supplier name],
From [date], [Company] will only pay invoices that show a valid purchase order (PO) number. We will return invoices without a PO number to you unpaid.
If our team calls you with an urgent order, please ask for the PO number before you ship. For orders outside business hours, the on-call contact at each plant can issue one: [Plant 1 name and phone], [Plant 2 name and phone], [Plant 3 name and phone].
Please also show the PO number on your packing slip. Thank you for helping us pay you on time.
[Name], Controller, [Company]
Some invoices will still arrive first, especially in the first months. Handle them the same way every time. AP puts the invoice on hold. The plant raises the after-the-fact PO with the same emergency fields. The normal approver reviews it, and only then does the invoice move to matching.
Track how many of these happen at each plant. That count is the clearest sign of whether the policy is taking hold.
When should you use blanket POs and punch-out catalogs for MRO?
Most MRO purchases are small, frequent and predictable, and they should never need the emergency path. Two channels take them out of the approval queue without taking them out of control.
The first is a blanket PO. It covers repeat purchases from one supplier over a set period. It has a total amount, an end date, the plants it covers and the items or categories included. Each order is a release against it, so maintenance orders directly and finance sees every release against a known limit.
Set the blanket amount from last year’s spend with that supplier. Review it every quarter so it does not become an open checkbook.
The second channel is a punch-out catalog. A requester opens a supplier’s website from inside your purchasing system and fills a cart at your negotiated prices. The cart comes back as a purchase request. It then follows your approval rules and becomes a PO automatically.
ProcureDesk connects to more than 200 punch-out catalogs, including Grainger, McMaster-Carr, Amazon Business and Home Depot. Plant teams buy from the suppliers they already use, without phone calls or emailed quotes.
How do emergency MRO buys affect month-end accruals?
Procurement guides rarely cover this part of MRO strategy, but Controllers deal with it every month. When a part arrives in one month and the invoice comes in the next, the expense belongs to the month the part arrived.
If the purchase has no PO and no receiving record, finance does not know it exists at month-end. Nobody accrues it, so the plant’s spend for that month is understated. The cost then lands in the following month, and both months are wrong.
With a PO and a receipt in place, the same event looks very different. The approved PO shows $5,450 as committed spend for Plant 2 on October 29. The receipt logged at 9 a.m. shows the gearbox arrived in October.
At month-end, your received-not-invoiced report lists it. You book the accrual to Plant 2 against the right GL account, even though the invoice will not arrive until November 21. When it does, it matches the PO and the receipt, and the accrual reverses cleanly.
| Step | Without a PO | With a PO and receipt |
|---|---|---|
| October 29, 2 a.m. | Phone order, PO number promised later | Emergency request approved on a phone, PO issued before the supplier ships |
| October 29, 9 a.m. | Part arrives, nothing recorded | Receipt logged against the PO at Plant 2 |
| October month-end | No accrual; Plant 2 understated by $5,450 | $5,450 accrued to Plant 2 from the received-not-invoiced list |
| November 21 | Invoice arrives with no PO; AP investigates | Invoice matches PO and receipt; accrual reverses |
| Freight | $650 discovered on the invoice | $650 visible and approved on the PO as a separate line |
Illustrative example. Amounts and dates are for explanation only.
Committed spend is useful during the month, too. A Controller building a cash forecast on the 20th can see approved MRO spend by plant before any invoices exist, instead of estimating from last month.
Plant managers can see their own committed spend against budget. For many maintenance managers, it is the first time they see how much the plant has spent before the month ends.
How does 3-way matching work for emergency MRO purchases?
Three-way matching compares the purchase order, the receipt and the invoice before payment. For planned MRO it is routine. Emergency buys need two adjustments, because the final price is often unknown at order time and a busy crew may log the receipt late.
First, allow a wider price tolerance on emergency POs than on catalog orders, such as a few percent or a fixed dollar amount. Route anything above it to the original approver instead of rejecting it.
Second, make receiving part of the emergency rule. The person who signs for the part logs the receipt the same day, ideally from a phone.
Back to the gearbox. The invoice arrives at $5,520 instead of $5,450. The $70 difference is inside tolerance, so the invoice is cleared for payment. At $6,200, it would have gone back to the Plant 2 manager with the PO and receipt attached.
Demo video
Watch purchasing automation in ProcureDesk
See how a purchase request gets approved and becomes a purchase order in ProcureDesk.
Which KPIs show whether your MRO procurement strategy is working?
Track a short set of measures for each plant every month, and share them with plant managers. Use your spend analysis as the baseline. Then improve each measure quarter by quarter, rather than chasing another industry’s benchmark.
| KPI | How to calculate it | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Emergency share of MRO spend | Lane 3 spend divided by total MRO spend, per plant | Whether breakdowns or convenience are driving purchasing |
| After-the-fact PO rate | POs created after the supplier shipped, divided by all MRO POs | Whether the emergency rule is followed at night and on weekends |
| Invoices received without a PO | Count and value of MRO invoices with no valid PO, per plant | Whether suppliers and plants accept no PO, no pay |
| Catalog and blanket coverage | MRO spend through punch-out catalogs or blanket POs, divided by total MRO spend | How much routine buying sits in controlled channels |
| Emergency approval time | Minutes from request to approval on lane 3 | Whether the fast lane is actually fast enough to be used |
| Expedite and freight spend | Rush freight charges as a share of MRO spend | The hidden premium paid for poor planning |
| Repeat emergency parts | Parts bought on the emergency path more than once in a quarter at the same plant | Where spares or preventive maintenance need to change |
How do you roll out an MRO procurement strategy in 90 days?
| Weeks | What to do | Output |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 2 | Pull twelve months of MRO invoices by plant, supplier and GL account. Mark which ones had no PO and which looked like emergencies. | A baseline for every KPI above |
| 3 to 4 | Agree the four buying lanes, the approval matrix and named backups with each plant manager. | A one-page MRO policy per plant |
| 5 to 6 | Write emergency terms with each plant’s breakdown suppliers and send the no PO, no pay notice with a start date. | Approved supplier list and supplier notices |
| 7 to 10 | Move repeat buying onto blanket POs and punch-out catalogs. Set up mobile approval for on-call approvers. | Routine MRO in controlled channels |
| 11 to 13 | Start returning invoices without a PO. Review the first month of KPIs with each plant manager. | First monthly scorecard per plant |
Where does ProcureDesk fit in an MRO procurement strategy?
ProcureDesk is a procurement and AP automation platform that puts the approval before the purchase. Maintenance teams raise requests from a phone or browser, including emergency requests at night. Each request routes to the right approver by plant, department, amount and vendor.
Approved requests become POs automatically. Punch-out catalogs keep routine buying on negotiated prices. Budgets by plant show committed spend as soon as a PO is approved. Automated 3-way matching checks every invoice against the PO and the receipt before payment.
ProcureDesk works with the accounting system you already run: QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, QuickBooks Enterprise, Sage Intacct, NetSuite, Microsoft Business Central and Xero. The ProcureDesk team handles setup, including approval rules, supplier catalogs and the accounting integration.
Customers typically go live in 2 to 4 weeks without an IT project. To compare the control layer across tools, see our guide to procurement software for manufacturing.
“I was looking for a solution that would help push some of the approval responsibilities over to our managers. We wanted to improve efficiency, reduce mistakes, and get management teams involved in the purchase approval process to free up my time and shift accountability downstream.”
George Parish · COO, Funai Lexington Technology (Manufacturing)
The approval matrix above depends on plant and department managers approving their own spend, instead of sending everything to one executive. Funai Lexington Technology is a microfluidics manufacturer and a legacy division of IBM and Lexmark. Its purchase requests used to live in an Excel spreadsheet. Staff emailed the sheet to the COO for approval, then re-keyed each order into QuickBooks.
With ProcureDesk, department managers approve requisitions and track their own budgets. Orders flow into QuickBooks without manual entry. Read the Funai Lexington case study.
Want to put a number on what emergency MRO buying costs you today? Use our ROI calculator to estimate the hours and cost before you start.
What does the gearbox example look like with the strategy in place?
Run October 29 again. At 2:05 a.m., the Plant 2 supervisor opens an emergency request on his phone. He enters Line 3, the gearbox, the work order number, the approved distributor, $4,800 for the part and $650 for overnight freight.
The total is between $5,000 and $25,000, so the request goes to the on-call plant manager and notifies the Controller. The plant manager approves at 2:11 a.m. The PO number goes to the distributor, and the part ships.
At 9:00 a.m., the supervisor logs the receipt. At October month-end, the $5,450 appears on Plant 2’s received-not-invoiced list, and finance accrues it to the right GL account. On November 21, the invoice arrives at $5,520. It matches the PO and receipt within tolerance, and AP clears it for payment that day.
Nobody had to find Mike. The line restarted at the same time as before. The only difference is that finance knew about the purchase six minutes after it happened, not twenty-three days later.
Live walkthrough · 20 minutes
See an emergency MRO request, plant-level approvals and 3-way matching run on real data, with your accounting system connected.
Request a demo →Frequently asked questions
What is an MRO procurement strategy?
An MRO procurement strategy is the set of rules for buying maintenance, repair and operations items. It decides which suppliers each site uses, which buying channel each part goes through and who approves which amount. A complete strategy also covers emergency purchases, supplier invoicing rules and month-end accruals, not just sourcing and inventory.
What are MRO procurement best practices?
Start with a spend analysis by plant before you change anything. Then cut tail suppliers and agree emergency terms with the ones you keep. Stock critical spares, and give each type of purchase its own buying lane with an approval matrix by plant and amount. Require a PO before suppliers ship, and track the emergency share of spend and invoices without a PO every month.
How do you control emergency MRO purchases?
Create a separate emergency lane with a named approver per plant, a value cap and pre-approved suppliers. Require a PO number before the supplier ships, and let approvers act from a phone. If a PO truly cannot be raised in time, require an after-the-fact PO by the end of the next business day. Then review the emergency share of MRO spend by plant every month.
Should emergency MRO purchases need approval?
Yes, but the approval has to be fast enough that maintenance uses it. A short phone request, routed to an on-call approver for that plant and amount, adds a few minutes. In return, finance gets a record the same day. Skipping approval is what produces invoices weeks later with no PO, no receipt and no clear owner.
What does no PO, no pay mean for MRO suppliers?
It means accounts payable will not pay an invoice without a valid purchase order. You tell suppliers this in writing from a set date. You also give them an after-hours contact for emergency PO numbers. From then on, AP returns invoices without a PO to the supplier instead of paying them and fixing the paperwork later.
How do you accrue for MRO parts received without an invoice?
Accrue the expense in the month the part arrived, using the PO amount and the receipt date. At month-end, a received-not-invoiced report built from approved POs and receipts lists these items by plant and GL account. When the invoice arrives, match it to the PO and receipt, then reverse the accrual.
Related reading
- Procurement software for manufacturing: stop rogue MRO spend
- How ProcureDesk handles MRO purchasing
- What is MRO procurement?
- MRO procurement for logistics: cutting spend across sites
- What is maverick spend?
About the author
Shaoli Paul
Shaoli Paul is a B2B SaaS content marketer with 4.8 years of experience across fintech, AI analytics, and procurement. She has built content and SEO programs at companies like HighRadius and Chargebee, where she worked on comparison content, migration pages, and blog strategy that tied directly to pipeline. She is currently a Content Manager at ProcureDesk. She works with the founding team and customer success organization to translate first-hand onboarding observations across 300+ mid-market finance teams into practical guidance for Controllers, Accounting Managers, and CFOs running procurement evaluations. Her work focuses on the operational decisions finance leaders at 100 to 1,000 employee companies make when they outgrow email-based approvals and need real spend control.
