Purchasing is where many organizations lose money quietly: new vendors set up without checks, purchases approved after the fact, and invoices paid at prices that don't match the contract. Business Central has the building blocks to control this. This guide covers the controls to put in place and where an extension can help.
1. Vendor onboarding
- A defined request and approval process for new vendors.
- Required information before a vendor can be used: legal name, tax numbers, payment terms, banking details, insurance where relevant.
- Separation between the person who requests a vendor and the person who approves bank details.
- Vendor templates in Business Central so posting groups and terms are set consistently.
Changes to vendor bank details are a common route for payment fraud. Treat them as a controlled change with call-back verification.
2. Requisitions and approvals
- Who can request a purchase, and for what.
- Approval limits by amount, department and category.
- Approvals before the order is placed, not when the invoice arrives.
Business Central includes approval workflows for purchase documents, with approver limits and substitutes. Requisitions from staff who don't place orders themselves often need an additional step or an extension.
3. Contracts and agreed prices
- Supplier agreements with validity dates, price lists and quantity commitments.
- Purchase prices maintained in Business Central so orders default to the agreed price.
- Blanket purchase orders for recurring supply over a period.
- Alerts before contracts expire or renewal dates pass.
4. Receiving
- Goods receipts recorded against the order, by the people who received them.
- Partial receipts and returns handled through the system, not on paper.
5. Invoice matching
- Invoices created from received lines, so you pay only for what arrived.
- Price and quantity differences reviewed before posting.
- Duplicate invoice checks using the vendor invoice number.
Business Central supports creating invoices from receipt lines. Finance and Supply Chain Management includes configurable invoice matching policies with tolerances. If you need tolerance-based matching in Business Central, plan it as part of the design.
6. Monitoring
- Spend by vendor, category and department.
- Purchases made outside contracts.
- Open commitments and expiring agreements.
- Approval cycle times, to spot bottlenecks.
Our extension
Our Procurement & Contract Management extension adds purchase requisitions, approval routing and supplier contract tracking to Business Central. We walk through it using your own approval limits and contract examples.
Next step
Request a procurement demo, or see how these controls fit with the rest of the system in our Business Central services.