The Purchase Requisition Process, Step by Step

In businesses without a system, purchasing starts wherever it starts — a WhatsApp message, a note left on a desk, a vendor's reminder call. Money gets committed before anyone formally decided to spend it.

A purchase requisition fixes that by giving spending a single front door. Here is what the process looks like when it works.

Step 1: The need is raised

Whoever notices the need creates the requisition: stores seeing stock run low, production finding a shortfall against a work order, or any department with a legitimate requirement.

A good requisition states four things:

• What — the item, specified clearly enough that purchasing does not have to guess
• How much — quantity in the correct unit of measure
• When — the date it is genuinely needed
• Why — the job, work order or purpose it serves

That last field prevents more waste than any approval rule. "For work order WO-0142" is checkable; "for stock" is not.

Step 2: Submission

Submitting is a deliberate act that says the requisition is complete and ready for review. Keeping submission separate from creation lets people draft, gather details and correct mistakes without generating approval noise.

Step 3: Approval

The requisition reaches whoever is authorised to approve that kind of spend. They can approve it, or send it back.

Approval is where three things happen that are impossible in an informal process:

1. Consolidation. An approver seeing all pending demand can spot three departments requesting the same item and combine the buy.
2. Challenge. "We have 400 of these at Unit 2" is only possible if someone with visibility reviews the request.
3. Accountability. The record of who approved what, and when, exists permanently.

Step 4: Conversion to a purchase order

Once approved, the requisition becomes a purchase order — carrying its items and quantities forward rather than being retyped. The PO then follows its own submit-and-approve path before being sent to the vendor.

The requisition remains linked to the PO, so you can always trace a purchase back to the need that caused it.

Step 5: Receipt closes the loop

Goods arrive against the PO, a goods receipt note records what actually came, inspection accepts or rejects it, and accepted material enters stock. At that point the chain — need → approval → order → receipt → inspection → stock — is complete and auditable end to end.

Where the process usually breaks

Approval takes too long. If approvals sit for days, people route around them and the process becomes theatre. Set an expectation (same day is realistic for most SMEs) and check whether it is being met.

Too many approval levels. Every level adds delay and diffuses responsibility. Most growing businesses need one, occasionally two for large amounts.

Requisitions raised too late. A requisition raised the day stock runs out is a requisition guaranteed to become an emergency purchase. This is why reorder alerts that create requisitions automatically matter — they move the trigger earlier.

Vague specifications. Purchasing guesses, the wrong item arrives, and everyone blames the vendor. A specification field that is actually filled in prevents an expensive category of error.

Emergency bypass becomes the norm. Every business needs an exception path. If more than a small fraction of purchases use it, the normal path is too slow — fix that rather than tightening the exception.

What good looks like

Once the process is running properly, a few things become true:

• Nobody asks "did we order that?" — the answer is on screen
• Pending demand is one list, not ten conversations
• Emergency premium-price buying becomes rare enough to be notable
• Accounts can match every invoice to a PO and a receipt

Purchasing is one of the fastest wins in an ERP implementation, because the process is naturally document-shaped — it was only ever missing the documents.

See requisitions, approvals and PO conversion working together in FlexgrewERP, or book a demo and bring your current approval headaches.