7 Best purchasing management software in 2023 [In-depth review]

Today there are over 200 different purchasing management software. We spent 50 hours comparing the top 50 to find the seven best you can use to implement a proactive spend management process.

What is the best Purchasing Management Software?

1. ProcureDesk – Best for small to medium-sized companies that need a complete procure-to-pay solution.

2. Procurify – Best for medium-sized companies looking for P2P automation.

3. Precoro – Best for purchasing automation with internal catalogs

4. Order – Best for companies that need a marketplace.

5. Procurement Express – Best for companies looking to automate the purchase requisition process.

6. Tradogram – Best for construction and project management companies.

7. SpendWise – Best for basic purchasing automation

1. ProcureDesk

Our Verdict — Best for small to medium-sized companies that need a flexible purchasing solution.

Price: Starts at $380/month

 

ProcureDesk is a complete purchasing management software that is designed for fast-growing businesses. It provides the finance and procurement team with comprehensive purchasing controls so that you can control your spending and plan your cash flow. ProcureDesk provides features that support the purchasing process, invoice processing, strategic sourcing process, contract management, and expense report management.

The Best Part:

1. A complete purchasing management system that includes purchasing, inventory, and supplier quote management.
2. Strong support for catalogs that enables better purchasing experience for employees.

The Worst Part:

1. It is a little expensive compared to other procurement management solutions.

Get it if you want a cloud-based procurement solution that is easy to use and automates your entire purchasing process.

Best For

ProcureDesk purchasing solution is best for small to mid-sized companies with a decent amount of purchasing activities. If you are just starting, this might not be the best solution for you.

Top Features

Purchase Requisitions

Purchase requisition refers to the functionality of electronically creating purchase requisitions. A purchase requisition is an important feature of any purchase order management software.

A couple of aspects of electronic purchase requisitions that make it easier for employees to create purchase requisitions quickly:

User Defaults

With user defaults, employees don’t have to enter the same information repeatedly.

The common user defaults are:

1. Employees department.
2. Employees default ship-to location.
3. Employee cost center
4. Default Chart of accounts based on the previous purchase history.
5. Class field if you are using QuickBooks.

ProcureDesk remembers the user defaults so that the user doesn’t have to enter the same information again. Here is an example:

Catalogs

Catalogs make it easier for employees to create new purchase requisitions, especially for items they repeatedly purchase.

A catalog is a collection of items that you purchase, and the user can select which item they want to purchase.

Since the pricing and description are already populated, the employee saves time creating the request.

The suppliers also benefit from this because the pricing is accurate, and they can process the order faster.

There are two types of catalogs.

1. Vendor managed
2. Self-managed

Vendor Managed Catalogs

As the name suggests, the vendor manages this type of catalog.

If the vendor is selling a large spread of items, it is easier for the vendor to keep an updated catalog vs. a catalog that the buyer manages.

It is common for large retailers like Amazon.com and companies to sell thousands of parts.

The vendor-managed catalog is also called a punchout.

Here is an example of Amazon.com and how the punchout works.

In this case, the employee clicks on the Amazon.com logo from the purchasing system (ProcureDesk).

The purchasing software then directs the user to the Amazon.com website.

You would need an Amazon business account for this work.

The employees can then browse the entire site, selecting what she needs to purchase.

The big difference is that the employee needs approval before making a purchase.

You request approval by clicking on the “Submit these items for Approval” button.

The system copies the cart data into the user’s purchase request in ProcureDesk.

Vendor catalogs combined with a user-friendly interface for purchasing can significantly reduce the purchase cycle time.

 

That’s how easy it is.

Self-Managed Catalogs

As the name suggests, a vendor doesn’t manage this catalog type.

Instead, the buyer creates and manages the catalog through supplier collaboration.

Suppose you have a small supplier and they only sell you 10-15 items.

It probably doesn’t make sense for the supplier to create a website and manage the catalog for you.

In that case, you can create an internal catalog. The supplier provides you with the required information, and you create a catalog.

Here is an example of an internal catalog.

The employees can easily create purchase requests by clicking on the “Add to request” button.

The rest of the process is the same whether you use a supplier or self-hosted catalog. Catalog management should be part of the overall supplier management strategy.

Approval Workflows

With the approval workflow, the employees don’t have to worry about the approval matrix and who needs to approve the purchase. Managers get real-time visibility into budgets and overall spending.

ProcureDesk automatically identifies the approval routing and sends the purchase request for approval.

Many systems allow the employees to select who should approve the purchase. It might seem that self-assignment is a more flexible approach. But this could cause an issue with compliance.

If an employee picks up the wrong approver, it takes more time to approve a request, or in many cases, the request gets approved by the wrong person.

We will cover this in more detail in the workflow section.

Purchase Requests Status

With purchase request status tracking, employees can easily track purchasing through the procurement cycle. If it is pending approval, the employee can easily track with whom it is pending approval.

Here is an example of how employees can easily track the purchase request:

Employees can also send reminders to the managers for approval.

Flexible Workflow Engine

A flexible workflow engine allows you to create purchase approval workflows based on your compliance needs.

ProcureDesk workflow engine offers customizable approval workflows to meet your unique approvals needs.

Here are the key components of the ProcureDesk workflow engine:

Workflow Conditions

Workflow conditions allow the flexibility to create custom workflows and set up an approval management process. It allows managers to make informed decisions.

There are many workflow conditions that you can configure in ProcureDesk, but the following are the most common workflow conditions.

1. Manager approval: This workflow condition allows you to route the request to the immediate manager for approval. If the manager doesn’t have the appropriate authority, the system automatically sends it to the next person in the reporting hierarchy.
2. Amount-based approval: The amount-based workflow condition allows you to route the purchase request based on the purchase amount. For example, in addition to the manager, the CFO should approve any request that is more than $50,000.
3. Category-based approval: Category-based approvals help with routing special requests for approval. For example, any IT manager must review any IT hardware-related purchase. In this case, no matter who is purchasing, the IT manager must always review and approve.
4. Department: There are times when only one person in a department can approve a purchase. It is where department-based approvals make sense. For example, route all Sales requests to Bob.
5. Location: A location-based workflow allows you to route the requests to specific people for each location. For example, you want the system to route all requests to a location’s general manager.
6. General Ledger account: You probably want to route the requests based on the chart of accounts. It is a common use case when the purchase approval comes from Finance and not the department head.
7. Budget owners: With Budget tracking, you can route the approvals to appropriate stakeholders.

Approval Reminders

Approval reminders are an important part of procurement management software.

Even though the system sends email notifications for approvals, managers forget to approve purchase requests on time.

And that is where approval reminders can help.

You can ensure that purchase requests are approved on time by automating reminders.

Here is an example of the daily reminder sent by ProcureDesk:

Omnichannel Approvals

Everyone has their preference when it comes to approving purchase requests. If a manager is on the road all the time, they don’t have time to log in to the application and approve the purchase.

For people who are on the road a lot a mobile app is the best way to approve purchases for people who are on the road a lot.

It is probably easier to log in to the application to approve the purchase request for approvers in the office.

Or they might want to approve over email.

An omnichannel approach to approvals is probably the best approach so that the approvers can approve the way they want to approve.

With ProcureDesk, you can use the web app, email, or mobile app for purchase approvals.

Here is an example of mobile app approval:

Purchase Order Software

The purchase order software allows the employee to convert a purchase request into a purchase order and track the purchase order lifecycle.

Once the purchase requisition is approved, you can convert that into a purchase order.

The vendor acknowledges the purchase order and then ships the product.

ProcureDesk allows for the automated creation of purchase orders.

You can set up automated rules on when to convert a purchase request into a purchase order.

Here is an example of a purchase order that ProcureDesk generates:

Once the system generates the purchase order, you can track the whole purchase order lifecycle.

When it comes to purchase order tracking, there are three things you need to track.

Purchase Order Acknowledgment

A purchase acknowledgment is a confirmation from the vendor that they have received the purchase order. It also allows the vendor to confirm whether they can deliver the product.

For example, if the product is back-ordered, the vendor can use this process to inform the buyer that the product is currently unavailable.

Here is an example of a vendor’s purchase order acknowledgment:

Shipping Confirmation

With a shipping notice, the vendor can provide the tracking details of the purchase order.

You can request that the vendor submit a shipping confirmation directly through a purchasing system.

That way, you have all your information in a single place.

ProcureDesk then tracks the package and informs the stakeholders when the product arrives.

Purchase Order Receipt

A purchase order receipt is a confirmation that the product has been received.

The order contact or the warehouse contact can create a purchase order receipt.

Here is an example of a purchase receipt:

 

 

When a buyer creates a purchase receipt, the AP (Accounts Payable) team knows that the product is received and the invoice is ready to pay.

If the product is damaged, or you need to return the product, you can note that in a purchase order receipt.

Inventory Management

An inventory management solution is not a must-have feature for purchasing management software. It depends upon your business.

For example, inventory management is necessary if you have a lab and purchase lab supplies.

If you are a school, then the inventory management function is very helpful in tracking what supplies you have in stock before you order.

There are three main areas for inventory control:

Inventory Tracking

Inventory tracking is a key function of warehouse management, and it allows you to keep track of what you have in stock at any time.

To get started, identify all the items you want to track inventory.

Then as you receive the items, the system will update the on-hand inventory.

Here is a snapshot of the on-hand inventory report:

Inventory Adjustments

Inventory adjustment allows you to reduce the on-hand inventory as you use the inventory.

A company can make inventory adjustments in multiple ways:

You can create an adjustment as you use the inventory, or one can update the inventory at the end of the month after an audit.

Here is an example of how to create an inventory adjustment:

Inventory Valuation

With inventory valuation, you know the inventory’s value at all times.

There are primarily three ways to track the inventory valuation:

Average cost: Average cost method calculates the inventory cost based on the average unit cost. An average cost is a most commonly used method to track inventory valuation. But it is not helpful if the product’s price keeps on fluctuating.

LIFO: Last In First Out is the valuation method where the Last item is consumed first.

FIFO: First in, First out is the valuation method where the inventory valuation is based on the assumption that the items received first are consumed first.

Here is an example of an inventory valuation report with an average cost:

 

Integration With The Accounting System

Purchasing management software is incomplete without real-time integration with the accounting system.

For effectively booking the cost to different cost centers and general ledger accounts, you need the cost account data in the purchasing system.

If you don’t integrate with the purchasing system, the AP team needs to re-create the accounting system’s data.

The transactions created in the purchasing system need to be updated manually into the accounting software package. For example, purchase orders that are created in ProcureDesk.

That is why ProcureDesk supports integration with different accounting packages. The purchasing data is synced automatically with the accounting system.

Here is a summary of what data is exchanged between the accounting package and ProcureDesk:

ProcureDesk supports integration with the following systems:

1. Bill.com
2. QuickBooks Online
3. QuickBooks Desktop
4. Xero
5. Sage Intacct
6. Netsuite

 

Pricing

ProcureDesk offers three pricing plans:

1. The purchase order module starts at $380 and covers 10 users.
2. The base plan covers all the core features for purchasing automation, including requisition, purchase orders, receipts, and order tracking.
3. Annual subscriptions provide a 20% discount on all plans. All plans come with a 14-day free trial.

Schedule a demo and see how ProcureDesk can help you streamline purchasing.

 

2. Procurify

 

Our Verdict — Best for small to medium-sized companies.

Price: The vendor doesn’t mention pricing on its website.

Procurify is a complete spend management company that helps streamline the procurement process. The product helps finance and procurement professionals to control spending and get complete visibility into the cash flow. Procurify offers different procurement modules for the procurement department.

The Best Part:

1. The best part of Procurify is its comprehensive suite of features that help streamline the procurement process and allow for business spend management.

The Worst Part:

1. It is a bit expensive compared to other features. There is limited support for punchout catalogs.

Best For

Procurify is best for small to medium-sized companies who want to automate a manual purchasing process and don’t need strong support for punchout catalogs.

Top Features

Purchase Requisitions

Procurify purchase requisition module automates the manual purchase requisition process.

The purchase requisition module is designed to support different types of purchase requisitions. For example, an employee can create a request for purchase, travel, or just an expense.

The users can quickly track what purchase requisitions are pending and what are approved.

The system supports user defaults. When creating the purchase requisition, the system automatically defaults the user location and department.

A buyer can create the purchase requisition or “request for order” in three ways:

1. You can select an item from a catalog.
2. You can select an item from a vendor punchout like Amazon.com. Procurify recently added vendors other than Amazon.com, so you might want to check with them on the total number of vendors supported by them.
3. You can enter the items manually, one at a time.

Here is the purchase request dashboard:

Flexible Workflow Engine

Procurify offers a flexible workflow engine that allows administrators to set up the purchase approval workflow.

The workflow engine allows different approval setups using the concept of workflow groups.

You can set up a workflow group and assign conditions to those groups. It is similar to ProcureDesk entry conditions, where you can define different conditions for workflow.

Once the group is defined, the system dynamically assigns the approver to the purchase requisition.

The user doesn’t need to remember who needs to approve the purchase, which reduces compliance risk.

Procurify has a mobile app that supports purchase approvals.

Purchase Order Software

Procurify’s purchase order software module is designed specifically for buyers.

Once the purchase request is approved (called RFO – Request for Order in Procurify), buyers can convert the purchase requisition into a purchase order.

The important thing to note here is that you need a purchase request to create a purchase order.

A buyer can’t create a purchase order without creating a purchasing request first.

The system allows you to combine multiple requests from a single vendor into one purchase order.

This feature could be beneficial for reducing the freight cost because buyers can combine the orders.

A disadvantage of this approach is that if the vendor doesn’t support multiple ships to addresses on the same purchase order, you can only combine purchase requests that are going to the same ship to address.

Inventory Management

Procurify doesn’t provide an inventory management system at the time of this writing. Please check with the vendor for the latest on this topic.

Integration With The Accounting System

Procurify supports integration with different accounting systems to sync the data to the accounting system.

Procurify supports QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop integration.

There is support for Netsuite, and Procurify is certified to work with Netsuite.

The system supports integration using CSV files for other systems like Microsoft Dynamics.

In that case, the data is extracted from Procurify and imported into different accounting systems.

Pricing

Procurify doesn’t mention pricing on its website. But they do offer a complete procure-to-pay automation solution.

Here are the multiple packages on their website. You can call the vendor to get a price quote.

3. Precoro

Our Verdict — Best For purchasing automation with internal catalogs.

Price: Starts at $35/user/month

Precoro is a procurement software that helps companies control spending and save time by automating their purchase management process.

The Best Part:

1. Precoro is an easy-to-use and easy to setup.

The Worst Part:

1. Precoro is missing advanced access management features that help administrators control access to different system functionality. The reporting is also limited.

Best For

Precoro is best for small companies that want a simple purchase process without a strong accounts payable functionality.

Top Features

Purchase Requisitions

The purchase requisition module allows employees to submit a purchase requisition electronically.

The purchase requisition starts with the user selecting the date, department, and location.

It doesn’t seem that you can set up user defaults for the purchase request.

The user can then add the items they want to purchase.

There are two ways users can achieve this in Precoro.

1. You can enter the item manually in the purchase request. You can enter one item at a time or enter multiple items. There is also the ability to import the line items.

1. You can select the item from a catalog. A catalog is something you create in the system and manage on an ongoing basis.

Once the user creates the request, they can submit it to the approver for approval.

Flexible Workflow Engine

In Precoro, admins can set up workflows around users.

Here is how the approval workflow setup process works in Precoro.

1. You start by creating the steps in the workflow—for example, 2 step process or 3 step process.
2. Once you create the steps, you can define the users that will approve each step.
3. For each user in the workflow, you can define their approval thresholds and what department request they can approve.

The approval workflow setup process is simple and easy to manage for small companies.

But for large companies, there are always so many personnel changes, and it will be cumbersome to manage the approval workflows based on the named users.

Rather, we recommend an approach based on the reporting manager. You can link your purchasing management system to the HR system so that it can automatically import the users.

Purchase Order Software

With the purchase order module, Precoro provides an easy way to create and dispatch digital purchase order to the vendor.

A buyer can create a purchase order from a requisition, or you can directly create the purchase order in the system.

An employee can create a purchase order by entering the item’s description or selecting an item from the catalog like a purchase requisition.

Once the PO request is ready, the PO creator can submit the purchase order for approval.

The system allows you to attach supporting documents to the purchase order.

Inventory Management

Precoro provides the ability for companies to track the stock of the items in inventory.

The process starts with setting up a warehouse or location where you want to stock the inventory.

You can then update the status or on-hand quantity by downloading a spreadsheet and uploading the inventory data into the system.

The users can request the inventory through a warehouse request process. It is separate from a purchase request process.

The system allows you to control access to different functions of the inventory management process. For example – you can easily set up access for who can manage the inventory and who can create a warehouse request.

Integration With The Accounting System

Precoro supports seamless integration with QuickBooks Xero and Netsuite.

Precoro also has an open API that you can leverage to pull the transaction data and import it into your accounting system.

Pricing