Procurement handbook

Procurement answers four questions on every project:

• What do we need, and when? Driven by the estimate and the programme, not by memory.
• Have we already ordered it? So nothing is bought twice and nothing is forgotten.
• Did it actually arrive, and is it right? Recorded, then independently verified against a spec.
• What has it committed us to? Money spoken for, before any invoice lands.

Because ConstruC is department-first, procurement sees suppliers, materials and orders while Finance holds the money and Site holds the works. The strength is where those meet.

The one idea to hold onto. The material schedule is the spine. Every requisition, order, delivery and stock movement should point back at a line on it. When something points at nothing, that thing becomes invisible to the schedule — and the schedule will happily tell you to buy it again.

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Nine screens, one loop.

1. Suppliers — who you can buy from.
2. Material schedule — what the job needs, and the live stock position.
3. Requests — the formal "we need this", approved before money moves.
4. Orders — the commitment to buy; issuing it commits budget.
5. Data sheets — the approved spec for what is coming.
6. Deliveries — recorded, then verified against that spec by a second person.
7. Reorder — what is running out, and the last day to order it.
8. Reconciliation — does delivered minus used still equal what is on the ground.
9. Sub claims — what subcontractors are claiming, reviewed and certified.

FIG 2.1 — the loop. Every arrow is a real state change in the platform, and every one of them writes to the shared cost ledger Finance reads.

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FIG 3.1 — the procurement link map. The estimate says what to buy, the programme says when, Site says it arrived, Finance carries the money.

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The firm's list of who it buys from: name, contact, terms, category. Suppliers belong to your company and are shared across all of its projects, so a supplier added on one job is available on the next.

Every order and every subcontractor claim points at a supplier here. A supplier with no category or contact still works, but it is worth filling in — the fields are what make the directory searchable when someone else needs to place the order.

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The project's shopping list and stock ledger in one table. Per material:

Generate from BoQ seeds it from the priced bill in one click, and a banner tells you when measurable estimate items are not on the schedule yet. That banner is the drift between what the QS has priced and what procurement is tracking.

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This section exists because the platform will otherwise mislead you, quietly and confidently.

Picking the material from the schedule when you raise a requisition is optional. That link is what "ordered" counts. A requisition typed as free text converts into an order line pointing at nothing, and the schedule never learns the order exists.

What that looks like in practice, from a real project:

An issued purchase order for exactly the planned quantity, and every screen reporting that nothing had been ordered. The next buyer to look would order it a second time.

FIG 6.1 — one optional field decides whether the schedule can see its own orders.

The material schedule now warns you when this has happened, counts how many lines are floating, and — where a description matches exactly one material — names the row it looks like. It suggests; it never links on your behalf, because two materials with similar names are a guess nobody should make automatically.

What to do. Pick the material when you raise the requisition. If the banner is showing, open the requisition and set the material on each line; the link flows through to the order from there.

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The formal "we need this". A request carries a title, a cost code, a needed-by date, and one or more lines: material, quantity, unit, estimated price.

The flow is draft, submitted, approved, converted — and rejection is a real outcome that records a reason. Approved requests convert into purchase orders; the conversion carries each line's material link and estimated price straight through.

Two things happen automatically as you type:

• Rate-book pricing. Where the firm has a price history for a material, the estimated price is filled in from it.
• Over-order warning. If a line would take total ordered quantity meaningfully past what the schedule planned, you are told before you submit, not after.

Approval respects the firm's configured route — site to lead to manager to finance, or whatever your firm has set — and the person who raised a request cannot approve it.

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A purchase order is the commitment. It has a supplier, a cost code, lines with quantities and prices, payment terms and a delivery address.

Statuses: draft, pending approval, issued, acknowledged, part-received, complete, plus rejected and void.

Issuing is the moment money is committed. Before that, nothing is spoken for. Issuing requires the procurement lead — building an order and issuing it are deliberately different rights — and you cannot issue an order you raised yourself.

Voiding an order releases the commitment without touching real spend.

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The reorder board turns stock into a decision. Per material it shows:

Lead time defaults to seven days until you set a real one per material, and the board says when it is using the default. A material with no recorded usage shows as untracked — it has no velocity, so no honest cover figure can be produced for it.

This board is only as good as the links. On order comes from linked purchase-order lines. An unlinked order is invisible here, which is exactly how a material gets ordered twice.

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A data sheet is the approved specification for a material: the document, plus a structured checklist of the properties that matter. It moves through draft, submitted, approved — and can be superseded when a newer revision replaces it.

Approving is a lead's act. The approved sheet becomes the yardstick a delivery is checked against, and specs can be marked critical.

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Receiving is deliberately two steps: first you record what arrived, then a different person verifies it against the data sheet. Receiving is not the same as approving.

Step one, record the delivery. Against an issued order, log what came: quantity received per line, condition, and at least one photo or delivery ticket, required. Recording raises stock and books the actual cost of what was received.

Step two, verify against the data sheet. Verification turns every spec line into a tick — pass, fail or not applicable — with the value you observed. You can accept it clean, accept with issues, or reject.

• Critical means critical. If a spec marked critical fails, you cannot sign the delivery off clean. The platform checks the approved sheet's critical specs itself.
• Reject backs it out. Rejecting a quantity at verification reverses the stock and the cost that recording had posted.
• Four eyes. The person who recorded the delivery cannot verify it.

FIG 11.1 — recording moves the stock and the money; verification decides whether it stays moved.

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On top of verification is the site's own count. The crew that physically receives the goods records what they counted, and the platform cross-checks it against the recorded delivery.

When the two tally, the arrival is confirmed. When they do not, it is flagged and the site lead, procurement lead and project manager are notified with the exact gap.

FIG 12.1 — two independent records of the same arrival. Agreement is the evidence.

Why it is confirm-only. The site's confirmation never moves stock — the delivery already did. It is a cross-check, not a second receipt, so the same goods cannot be counted twice. And whoever recorded or verified the delivery cannot be the one to confirm it.

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Stock is only trustworthy if each physical delivery raises it exactly once. One rule guarantees it: if a material is on a live purchase order, its arrivals are recorded through the delivery, and the quick "received on site" shortcut is switched off for that material. Materials with no order — petty or site-bought — still use the shortcut.

FIG 13.1 — if the Received button is greyed out, that material is on an order; record its arrival under Deliveries. Used and adjustments are never blocked.

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The reconciliation tab closes the loop per material: planned, ordered, delivered, used, on hand, and the unaccounted balance between them. Four flags are raised automatically:

The summary counts flagged materials and totals the unaccounted balance. A clean board means every material's delivered less used equals what is physically there.

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Subcontractors submit claims for work done in a period. This tab is the internal review queue: claim number, period, description, amount claimed, and the supplier it came from.

Reviewing decides the claim — certified, or reduced with a reason. Deciding is a distinct right from viewing, so the person who sees the queue is not automatically the person who commits the firm to paying it. Certified claims flow into Finance as amounts owed.

The subcontractor's own view of this is a share link, not an account — they see their claims and nothing else about the project.

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A shared surface, also visible to other departments, showing work packages and their owners. Procurement uses it to see who owns the packages the materials are being bought for, so a shortage can be raised with the right person rather than broadcast.

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Separation of duties. Every sensitive step needs a second person:

• you cannot approve your own requisition
• you cannot issue an order you raised
• you cannot verify a delivery you recorded
• you cannot confirm a delivery you recorded or verified
• issuing an order and approving a data sheet require the procurement lead

Roles.

Your company's data is yours alone. Every supplier, order, requisition and delivery carries the company that owns it, and every query is scoped by it. Which company you belong to comes from your signed-in session, never from anything the request can set — so another firm's project cannot be reached by link or by guessing an address, reading or writing.

Department boundaries hold too. A procurement lead reads procurement and the shared programme. Finance, QS, design, site and equipment screens are refused — not hidden in the menu, refused at the data layer.

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1. Check the reorder board — what is crossing its reorder point, and the last day to order it.
2. Clear the requests — approve or route new requisitions; convert approved ones into orders. Check each line has its material picked.
3. Issue today's orders — a second pair of eyes issues them; budget commits, suppliers are notified.
4. Prepare the data sheets — make sure incoming materials have an approved sheet linked to their order.
5. Receive and verify arrivals — log deliveries with photos; a checker verifies against the sheet and rejects anything failing a critical spec.
6. Watch the flags — mismatches between a delivery and the site's count land in your notifications.
7. Glance at reconciliation — confirm delivered less used still equals on hand.

FIG 18.1 — the daily loop. It starts and ends on the schedule.

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Procurement keeps no books of its own. It writes into the one shared cost ledger Finance reads.

FIG 19.1 — there is no month-end reconciliation between procurement and finance, because there is only one ledger.

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This handbook describes procurement as built. Where a screen warns that a figure is understated, that warning is the platform telling you a link is missing — not a display fault.