Preventing Maverick Buying: Causes, Costs, Methods

Maverick buying means purchases that bypass the agreed procurement process: without a purchase requisition, without approval, or around existing framework agreements.

No single method prevents maverick buying in one-off purchases, because only one approach actually works: one that is faster than the workaround around it. Policies, approval workflows, mandatory catalogs, P-cards, and consolidation each address only one symptom. The actual root cause remains untouched. As long as the regular process takes longer than the procurement itself, the incentive to go around it persists.

At a Glance

• Maverick buying means purchases that bypass the agreed procurement process, for example without a purchase order or around framework agreements.
• You can pull your maverick rate from the ERP: flagged invoices divided by all invoices.
• For one-off requirements, only an official path that is faster than the workaround works. In the Single Creditor Model, supplier onboarding is no longer needed.

What Is Maverick Buying?

Maverick buying shows up in three forms. Someone orders without any purchase requisition and later just passes the invoice on. Someone buys from a different supplier even though a framework agreement exists. Or the purchase order is only created after the fact, once the invoice has already arrived.

Ill intent is rarely behind any of the three. Usually the intended path is too slow, too cumbersome, or not designed for the specific need at all.

What Does Maverick Buying Cost?

The obvious damage is lost terms. Whoever buys around the framework agreement pays list price instead of the contract price, and the volume procurement wanted to pool next time is then missing from the negotiation.

The effort is usually more expensive. An invoice without a purchase order can't be matched automatically. Accounting has to find out who ordered, whether the goods arrived and which cost center pays.

Then there is the risk. New suppliers enter the system without checks on creditworthiness, compliance or sanctions lists, and each of them is another creditor in the master data. This effort is the same for small amounts as for large ones.

What Is Your Maverick Rate?

In four steps, you can pull your maverick rate from data that already sits in your ERP.

Export the incoming invoices of the last twelve months. Flag every invoice that has no purchase order. Also flag every invoice whose purchase order was created only after the invoice date. Divide the flagged documents by all invoices in the period.

The result is your maverick rate. Split by category, it shows where demand bypasses the process. Purchases on company credit cards or personal expenses are missing from this figure because they don't arrive as supplier invoices. Count these receipts separately, or the rate will come out too low.

If the focus is on spare parts, custom-made items or trade-show supplies, you are dealing with one-off requirements. For these, there is rarely a suitable official path.

What Does Maverick Buying Mean for One-Off Purchases?

Maverick buying refers to orders that bypass the defined procurement process because a department orders directly from a supplier – without procurement, approval, or review. For recurring needs, established suppliers and framework agreements usually contain this. For one-off purchases, that structure is missing from the outset.

Why Does Maverick Buying Happen Especially with One-Off Purchases?

One example: a machine is down, a spare part is missing, and the manufacturer is new. The official path requires identifying the supplier, checking master data, creating a creditor, and getting the order approved – and that often takes days to weeks. Simply placing the order directly, on the other hand, gets the procurement itself done in hours – and it's exactly this difference that ultimately decides what an employee chooses.

This gap drives the behavior. Someone facing a deadline isn't weighing "compliant" against "fast," but "done in time" against "not done in time." The greater the gap between the official process and the actual need, the more rational the workaround looks to the person placing the order.

The pattern shows up broadly: one-off requirements disappear from reporting, because they run decentrally through personal expenses, personal credit cards, or informal arrangements – not through the intended path.

Three warning signs show the pattern:

• Employees order using personal credit cards and submit receipts only later.
• New suppliers appear in the creditor list without procurement knowing about them.
• Invoices land directly in accounting without a prior purchase order.

Which Methods Are Most Effective at Preventing Maverick Buying in One-Off Purchases?

Five approaches come up most often in practice – each one works, but none fully solves the underlying problem.

Policies and Communication

A clear procurement policy creates awareness. It legitimizes consequences for violations, but it doesn't speed up the process it prescribes. Under time pressure, the rule loses to the deadline.

Streamlining Approval Workflows

Fewer steps, clear deadlines, and automatic escalation noticeably speed up the process. The limit is reached with genuine one-off requirements. If a supplier is ordered from for the first time, someone still has to set them up as a new supplier – and that's what costs the most time, even with a streamlined workflow.

Mandatory Catalogs

Ordering only through the catalog works reliably for standard items, but the approach fails structurally for one-off requirements, because a special part that exists only once won't be listed in any catalog. The mandate forces an exception. Exceptions are the entry point to the workaround, not the end of it.

P-Cards for Small Amounts

Company credit cards with a limit make the person ordering fast, since they need neither an approval chain nor a new supplier setup. The price for that is control. Spend gets spread across many card statements instead of auditable purchase orders, receipts are missing or arrive late, and in the end there's no overview of individual purchases.

Consolidating into Fixed Order Windows

Regular consolidated orders reduce the number of individual transactions and, with it, the administrative effort per line item, but they require the kind of predictability that a genuine one-off requirement by definition doesn't offer. If it has to wait for the next order window, it misses its purpose.

All five methods improve individual levers – speed, control, or effort per transaction. None addresses the reason employees go around the process in the first place: the difference in time between the official and the informal path.

At a glance:

• Policies: create awareness. Don't change the duration of the process.
• Approval workflows: speed up standard cases. Still require separate setup for new suppliers.
• Mandatory catalogs: work well for standard items. Fail for genuine one-off items.
• P-cards: solve the speed problem. Cost control and auditability.
• Consolidation: lowers the effort per line item. Doesn't fit genuine one-off requirements.

The Structural Way Out: The Fastest Path Wins

Maverick buying is not a discipline problem, it's a speed problem. If the official path for a one-off purchase stays slower than reaching directly for the supplier, part of the workforce will keep going around it. That holds regardless of how many policies exist for it – the reason to go around it disappears only once the official path itself is the fastest.

That requires that nobody has to set up a new supplier for a new one-off purchase. If every irregular need runs through a single existing creditor, exactly that step falls away. It's the step that costs the most time today. Nobody needs to check master data and create a creditor anymore – for a supplier they might never need again.

That's the core idea behind the Single Creditor Model: one creditor for all one-off requirements. The practical guide to administrative costs of occasional purchases shows how this lever fits alongside consolidation, thresholds, and transparency.

Pedlar operates this model as a managed service. Pedlar takes over ordering, order confirmation, delivery coordination and compliant, centralized invoicing – all invoices come from one creditor instead of many individual suppliers.

Learn how the Single Creditor Model structurally prevents maverick buying in one-off purchases: Schedule a call →