It takes a lot of “stuff” to run a successful business. Daily operations require on-hand materials to organize tasks, serve clients, manage facilities care, support employees, and promote the business for growth. Keeping the office stocked and ready is a task unto itself. 

Organizing the procurement function for your office supplies list can be complex, but it doesn’t need to be difficult. Yet over 80 percent of leaders admit their indirect spend is not well-managed. 

A methodical approach to sourcing indirect procurement categories can help you meet daily needs and manage inventory. Stepping up to procurement software can make things even easier, saving your company a lot of time and money. 

This article delivers everything you need to know about managing office supplies categories for the office, including:

Download the free ebook: 5 Ways Your Purchasing Process is Leaking Cash (And How to Fix It)

Essential office supplies categories

Category management isn’t just for enterprise companies. Creating a well-organized procurement process with benchmarking for major purchase items and categories makes it easier to buy at competitive rates. 

Check out this office supply checklist for the most common procurement items businesses need by category, including sections for specialized verticals such as service businesses and cannabis dispensaries and cultivators. 

General office supplies

Technology

Furniture

Storage

Packaging and shipping

5 Ways Your Purchasing Process Is Leaking Cash, (and How to Fix It)
Ebook

5 Ways Your Purchasing Process Is Leaking Cash, (and How to Fix It)

Identify top areas where your current purchasing process might be falling short—and costing you BIG.

Download the ebook

Service-based business consumables

Service businesses often have different needs than the standard office. Many of these products are consumables, so purchasing in bulk rates for better discounts makes the most sense. Check out the items service-based businesses need most. 

Hair salons and spas

Gyms and fitness centers

Cannabis businesses

Finding the best office supplies for every category

Adopting better procurement processes can help preserve capital and reduce waste as businesses grow. Strategic sourcing ensures companies purchase the right quality and quantity of supplies from reliable vendors at competitive prices. 

Strategic procurement management looks at consumption patterns to forecast future needs and negotiate contracts with flexibility and scalability. These practices also build stronger supplier relationships to unlock additional savings through discounts and value-added services. 

Use the following strategies to find the best deal on all top office supplies list items:

Conduct a spend analysis: Regularly review and categorize the expenses associated with each office supplies category to identify spending patterns and opportunities for cost reduction.

Consolidate suppliers: Reduce the number of suppliers for similar categories to leverage bulk purchasing, improve negotiation power, and simplify supply chain management.

Develop supplier relationships: Foster long-term partnerships with key suppliers rather than treating each purchase separately (transactional vendor relationships). This leads to better terms, discounts, and access to special promotions.

Implement procurement solutions: Use electronic procurement systems to streamline the purchasing process, enforce policy compliance, and achieve better transparency in spending.

Adopt sustainable practices: Select supplies and suppliers to reduce environmental impact and lower costs in the long term through sustainability practices.

Regularly review contracts: Continuously assess contracts with suppliers to ensure they remain competitive and meet the organization's changing needs.

Utilize demand planning tools: Forecast future needs based on historical consumption data. This reduces the risk of overstocking or stock shortfalls.

5 Ways Your Purchasing Process Is Leaking Cash, (and How to Fix It)
Ebook

5 Ways Your Purchasing Process Is Leaking Cash, (and How to Fix It)

Identify top areas where your current purchasing process might be falling short—and costing you BIG.

Download the ebook

Top pitfalls in procurement for top office supplies categories

Strong procurement starts with a strong process. When evaluating and refining the purchasing process in an organization, be sure to look at common areas where many companies stumble on procurement optimization.

Lack of documented process: Without uniform standards and a sound procurement process for office supplies, organizations purchase redundant, out-of-policy, or unnecessary items. This leads to a wasted procurement budget and increased costs.

Overreliance on single suppliers: Dependence on a single supply source or transactional supplier relationships can lead to supply chain vulnerabilities, including supplier issues or market changes. Diversifying the supplier base can mitigate these risks and ensure continuity of supply. Look for ways to ensure the business has a fallback for critical items, either through supplier contract redundancy or with a platform to find alternative suppliers in cases of out-of-stock goods.

Spotty visibility: Without a clear view of spending across departments or business units, it becomes difficult to identify areas for cost savings or negotiate bulk discounts. A centralized procurement system provides visibility into all purchasing activities and enables strategic decision-making based on comprehensive data.

Light contract management: Mismanaged contracts result in missed opportunities for cost savings. They also open the door to non-compliance with terms and conditions. Build a contract management policy and system that makes compliance review and approval part of the standard procurement workflow to avoid contract issues.

Skipping sustainability: Ignoring the environmental impact of office supplies can result in missed opportunities for sustainability practices that could save money and reduce the organization’s carbon footprint over time. Sustainability-minded procurement is also valuable for younger companies hoping to attract funding from angel investors and venture capitalists. 

Lack of vendor performance evaluation: Failing to review contracts by using vendor scorecards with suppliers regularly may cause organizations to miss out on better terms or fail to adjust to changing needs and market conditions. Conducting routine lifecycle management for all active supplies ensures they continue to meet compliance and pricing benchmarks and acceptable thresholds of purchase price variance for competitive results.

Maintaining manual processes: Failing to utilize available technology for procurement processes can result in inefficiencies, lack of transparency, and missed opportunities for cost savings through electronic systems.

5 Cost-efficient procurement strategies for all office supplies categories

There are a few pitfalls to procurement, but just as many ways to optimize the purchasing process to make it faster, easier, and more cost-effective. Consider the following five strategies for preserving cash and improving the bottom line: 

  1. Leverage bulk buying: Consolidate orders for office supplies to take advantage of bulk purchase discounts. Larger orders often secure better pricing, reducing the cost per unit significantly. Some companies achieve this strategy through a group purchasing organization. A platform like Order.co enhances the benefits of traditional group purchasing in many ways. 
  1. Strengthen supplier negotiation: In a landscape where nearly 90 percent of stakeholders feel that contract negotiation isn’t very effective, it’s important to find ways to partner with suppliers to secure more favorable terms or discounts. Long-term relationships can also open up opportunities for exclusive deals or savings. These partnerships are great for both sides: Buyers get strong pricing and service, while suppliers can count on a steady recurring revenue stream with a streamlined transaction process. 
  1. Explore local vendors: Sometimes, local suppliers offer competitive prices and faster delivery times, reducing overall costs associated with shipping and handling. Buying locally also fosters better environmental procurement outcomes since supplies travel shorter distances and produce fewer overhead costs. 
  1. Consider multi-year contracts: Locking in prices with multi-year contracts can protect against price increases and provide cost certainty over time. However, ensure there's flexibility to adjust as needs change.
  1. Get procurement technology: Implement eprocurement systems that streamline the purchasing process, allowing for better tracking, comparison shopping, and access to online discounts unavailable through traditional channels.

Bring all your office supplies category purchases together with Order.co

No matter what your business needs to run, implementing procurement software simplifies managing all the top procurement categories. With Order.co, companies streamline procurement from request to settlement. The platform empowers buyers with access to curated catalogs for easy purchasing from every vendor and creates more time for accounting through automated approval and reconciliation. It gives finance teams visibility and budgetary control through a well-designed process and reporting suite. 

If you’re ready to harness the power of technology to build more efficiency and cost-savings into every office supplies category, get a demo of Order.co today. 

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“Our best-case scenario, maybe we’re 60 to 70 percent revenue by the end of the year. And that’s just a break even — and only that if I’m not paying my debt service,” says Elliot Nelson, owner of McNellie's Group, which operates 20 restaurants across Arkansas and Oklahoma.

McNellie’s Group faces the same reality as all businesses trying to reopen in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Revenue is down. Expenses are up. Carelessness with cash is not an option.

After speaking with hundreds of finance teams across the country, we know that a weak purchasing process unnecessarily leaks cash out of your business. Below, we’ve compiled our findings to help you identify top areas where your current purchasing system might be falling short and determine how a comprehensive, software-driven purchasing platform can plug the holes and turn purchasing operations into a strategic advantage.

If you’re just starting to get your business off the ground, or interested in learning more about how to centralize your company's purchasing and payments, we would love to chat.

1. Maverick spend and a lack of formal purchasing process

Maverick spend, or any company purchase made outside of a formal purchasing process, is a leading culprit of wasted cash in purchasing. The goods and services bought through maverick spend aren’t necessarily a problem, but the process always is.

19% of employee spend is fraudulent.

As we illustrated in the examples above, maverick spend starts with that lack of a formal purchasing process. A recent Hackett Group study found that around half of all companies had no formal purchasing system for their employees to buy supplies and services. Without a formal system in place, employees don’t have to seek approval for purchases, purchases aren’t tracked, and budgets aren’t enforced.

Cozen O’Connor, a large law firm with 29 offices around the world, ran into this exact problem. Its 400+ employees were making office-supply purchases as needed, without any formal purchasing process or tracking system in place. With buying decisions distributed across the employee base, the firm had no ability to analyze spend per product, location, or category.

But within 24 hours of implementing software to track and manage spend, the firm identified savings opportunities of 10%. Compared with its maverick spend days, the firm is now saving $5,000-$6,000 per month on products alone.

The solution to maverick spend starts with a robust purchasing process. Your purchasing platform should include a single, centralized catalog, and each purchase must flow through that platform. Employees shouldn’t be allowed to make purchases outside of the system. The end of maverick spend starts with you helping employees make purchases the right way.

5 Ways Your Purchasing Process Is Leaking Cash, (and How to Fix It)
Ebook

5 Ways Your Purchasing Process Is Leaking Cash, (and How to Fix It)

Identify top areas where your current purchasing process might be falling short—and costing you BIG.

Download the ebook

2. Weak oversight of vendor performance

When you think about the historical approach to business purchases, you likely include items such as quotes, purchase orders, order confirmations, invoices, and receipts.

Thankfully, this document-intensive back-and-forth has now moved mostly to a digital format. But that hasn’t cut back on the number of required documents. QX Software Services found that a business purchase creates (on average) five to seven documents.

If you don’t keep up with these documents and ensure that they’re accurate, they’re useless. In fact, the very documents meant to protect your business can become the bane of your purchasing process and lead to wasted time, overspend, and more leaking cash.

An effective purchasing system consolidates the entire process into a single platform. From quote to invoice, every purchase is approved, recorded, tracked, and paid in the same system. The QX Software study we previously mentioned found that implementing a purchasing system can reduce costs by up to 50%.

From a documentation standpoint, San Francisco-based catering company ZeroCater reduced the number of invoices generated “from 200 invoices a month to maybe 3 or 4” with such a system. This one change cut down on the many tedious hours spent reviewing invoices while creating a more efficient system in the process.

3. Missing budget controls

Budgets are a given in the business world. Your employees expect them. You count on them as a road map for the next month, quarter, or year. It’s unfortunate that this budget-guided mentality doesn’t always make its way into the purchasing process at many companies.

A McKinsey study found companies that don’t actively control their tail spend with budget controls miss out on savings between 5% and 15%. Purchasing is a key budget item. Likewise, budget controls should be a key element in your purchasing system. Integrate budget controls into your purchasing process with software that can enforce preset rules. These rules often establish limits for spend by employee and department. You can also set spending caps for specific vendors and categories.

MINISO USA, a Japan-based designer brand, struggled to know how much of the overall budget their departments were spending since there was no spend visibility. Through a single purchasing platform, the company set budget limits for each of their stores that were all easily visible in the purchasing dashboard.

As a result, the operations team can now see the amounts being spent by department, control the overall budget, and have a solid answer for accounting every month.

5 Ways Your Purchasing Process Is Leaking Cash, (and How to Fix It)
Ebook

5 Ways Your Purchasing Process Is Leaking Cash, (and How to Fix It)

Identify top areas where your current purchasing process might be falling short—and costing you BIG.

Download the ebook

4. Accidental orders

Whether it’s incorrect quantities, wrong part numbers, duplicate orders, or some other error, accidental orders remain a common purchasing mistake. It may sound odd that a software platform can prevent typos in the purchasing process or eliminate duplicate magazine subscriptions for a single waiting room, but it can.

Any worthwhile purchasing process will automate checks and balances. You should be able to set up hierarchies of purchasing approvals. Let’s say you want your IT department to approve every department-related purchase. Employees should shop for every IT purchase, from mobile apps to new computers, through a single catalog.

Then, each purchase request should be funneled to the IT department for approval. Maybe you want to set up different thresholds within this IT approval process (e.g., an IT manager can approve purchases under $100, whereas IT purchases $100+ require approval from the VP of IT). Your system should allow this as well.

That same system should also allow you to audit purchases to check for errors, such as duplicate orders or overcharging. If your platform does nothing but eliminate accidental orders, you’ll have bested one of the most common culprits of wasted money in purchasing.

Be Relax, a global spa with 40 locations across 11 countries, adopted a software platform to bring control to a chaotic purchasing process. Before implementing the platform, managers bought supplies as needed and used company credit cards for purchases above a certain dollar amount. The company couldn’t enforce budgets, approve or deny purchase requests, or implement spending policies per location. Now, the platform enforces programmatic rules to ensure that each location stays within budget, purchases from approved vendors, and doesn’t place orders for unapproved items. It’s now impossible to make a non-compliant purchase.

5. Manual processes

A BCG study found that nine out of the top 20 Fortune 500 companies listed digital technologies as a critical element of their purchasing process. That’s because digital purchasing systems eliminate many problems that can arise from manual processes.

Manual processes are error-prone, time-consuming, and difficult to repeat. If you want to scale your business, your purchasing process must scale, too.

Digital purchasing platforms eliminate problems caused by manual purchasing processes. Human error is replaced with rules-based, automated systems. Time spent calling vendors, tracking down approvers, and gathering receipts is unnecessary when all purchasing is consolidated in a single, end-to-end system. And instead of following a different ordering procedure for every unique supplier, a single platform means a single, repeatable purchasing process.

Zenergy, a cycling workout company, was looking to scale its business, and manual processes were holding it back. When it ditched pen-and-paper purchasing and switched to a software-based solution, Zenergy reduced its purchasing time from 8 hours to 20 minutes.

Zenergy founder and CEO Nick Staples recalls: “It was nearly impossible to keep up with the growth we [had] planned, and the status quo wasn’t feasible.” By removing manual processes, Zenergy was able to expand from 4 locations to 19—an impossibility without an effective purchasing platform.

Could purchasing be your secret weapon?

For businesses reopening in the wake of COVID-19, a purchasing platform should be a top priority.

[solidcore] is a health and wellness company that recently scaled from 25 to 50 locations. To double its footprint, regional manager Artemis Benedetti recalled that a streamlined purchasing platform was necessary.

[Purchasing] was a mess. We had multiple user accounts on Amazon and also used Wayfair and many third party vendors for wipes, cubbies, etc. We were logging into accounts one at a time, shared logins, and had issues with passwords. . . . Without . . . consolidated ordering we wouldn’t have been able to open the number of studios we have today.

Stop thinking of purchasing as an unwelcome overhead expense, and adopt a platform that will propel your business to the next level.

If you're ready to plug your leaky cash flow with a new purchasing platform, sign up for an Order.co demo today.

Get started

Schedule a demo to see how Order.co can simplify buying for your business.

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