A procurement department, built by one person in four months.
A 120-person HVAC manufacturer with offices in four countries was buying office by office, with no written policy and nobody owning the process. I joined as the single point of contact for purchasing across the US, Canada and Israel. This is what I built, with a working model of the request portal at the center of it.
Everyone was buying. Nobody could see it.
The company had grown faster than its back office. People got what they needed, but each office did it its own way, and Finance had no single picture of what had been bought, by whom, or why.
- Purchases were scattered across staff accounts and several company cards.
- There was no consolidated record of spend. I rebuilt the first ten weeks from card alerts and vendor emails.
- About 40 software subscriptions sat on cards with no clear owner.
- There was no single vendor list. The same supplier showed up under different names in different countries.
- A basic request form existed, but there was no written policy behind it, and a denial came back with no explanation.
Six pieces that turn buying into a process.
None of this needed procurement software priced per seat. It needed clear rules, one front door, and records that fill themselves in.
A policy people can follow
Two purchase types, a short list of required fields, and a written rule for when a request gets denied. Reviewed by Finance and launched to the whole company three weeks after I started.
The request and approval portal
One front door for every purchase. Requests route to the right department head, then Finance, then a subscription check when needed. Everyone hears the outcome by email.
A vendor master
About 75 vendors in one list, with aliases, Hebrew and English names, how each one invoices and how each should be handled, plus a register of who owns which vendor account.
One spend ledger
A single log across legal entities and three currencies, so Finance can answer "what did we buy and why" without digging through inboxes.
AI-assisted triage
A daily routine that reads the purchasing inbox, team chat and new requests, opens and updates tickets, and sends a morning digest. About 180 tickets in its first month. It drafts, and a person approves.
An audit of my own system
Three months in, I had the whole workflow audited end to end. It ranked 14 gaps. I fixed the first batch within a week and documented the rest for whoever came next.
Alongside these: a standard equipment list for laptops, desktops and phones across all three countries, staff purchasing accounts consolidated under the company with correct billing entities, a review of 3,600+ card transactions to find recurring charges, and the selection and rollout of a corporate travel platform.
Send a request and approve it yourself.
This is a working model of the request portal. I reworked the form and designed the approval workflow and routing rules, and the company's IT team implemented the portal. Submit a request, then switch tabs to play the department head, Finance and the buyer.
Sample data only. Nothing you type here is saved or sent anywhere.
Waiting for a decision
In the real portal each approver only sees their own queue. Here you get all three hats.
Ready to order
Fully approved requests land here for the buyer. One queue, one person placing orders, exact links attached.
Every request, one table
Click a row to see its trail: who decided what, when, and why.
| PO | Requester | What | Total | Status |
|---|
- The form says no first.Missing address, missing link, vague purpose: blocked at submit, so approvers only see requests worth their time.
- Every no comes with a reason.A denial cannot be sent without one. The requester knows exactly what to fix.
- Routing is a table, not code.Each department maps to an approver. When a new office opened, adding it was one row.
A policy that fits on one page.
A portal only works if people know what a good request looks like. The policy came first, and the portal enforces it.
| Two purchase types | |
|---|---|
| Standard | A repeat purchase or a common office need. Paper, toner, things you have ordered before. |
| Specific | Anything else. Equipment, technical parts, specialist tools, or a first-time purchase. Needs a direct link to the exact item. |
| Not sure? | Treat it as Specific. |
| Do this | Not this |
|---|---|
| Include the delivery address on every request | Leave it blank and assume we know |
| Paste a direct link to the exact product | Expect someone else to find the product |
| Write a clear reason for the request | Write "needed for work" |
| Check every field before submitting | Assume missing details can be added later |
Routine weekly supplies stayed with each office manager. A process that makes people file a request for coffee gets ignored.
Four months, in order.
I ran every piece by hand before automating it. If a process does not work manually, automating it only makes the mess faster.
Wrote the system blueprint and tested the approval flow with dummy requests. Started meeting Finance, HR and the people doing the buying in each office.
Wrote the policy and procedure guide, had Finance review them, and launched the process to the whole company.
Brought staff purchasing accounts under the company. Extended routing when a new office opened. Started the vendor master. Rolled out a travel platform pilot.
Reconstructed ten weeks of spend from card alerts and emails, then moved it into one running ledger. Reviewed 3,600+ card transactions for recurring charges.
Switched on AI-assisted triage and ticket tracking. Audited the whole workflow, fixed the first batch of gaps, and packaged everything for handover.
From "who ordered this?" to a record of everything.
One front door
About 130 requests went through the workflow in three and a half months, across three countries and three currencies. About 98 were approved. Each one has a number, an owner and a trail.
Finance can see spend
Roughly 300 purchases logged in one ledger across entities and currencies, replacing a search through inboxes and statements.
It runs without me
Finance ran the same form and guide while I was out. The policy, vendor list, routing table and automations were all documented so the next person could pick them up.
Company name and people withheld. Figures cover the first four months of operation. The portal on this page is a working model with sample data, built to show the workflow and rules I designed. The production version was implemented by the company's IT team.
You probably do not need a procurement department. You need the parts that matter.
A request form that routes itself. One list of who you buy from. A record of what was spent and why. I build these for small businesses with the tools you already pay for, starting with a free look at how buying works in your company today.
Ask for a free look