Policy pre-check at intake

Policy pre-check exists so a known-rule miss stops at submit, with every problem listed and a next step attached, instead of vanishing or bouncing back from an approver days later. The requester still has the context. Two days later they do not.

Do not silently drop the request. A disappeared submission teaches people to email a buyer, raise a card in chat, or put the spend on a p-card.

The checker answers one question: given the supplier, amount, category, and fields on this form, does this request violate a written buying rule we already published? It does not decide who may authorize the spend. Delegation of authority (DoA) runs later, on a record that is already complete.

Return the full fix list in one pass. Hard-block only where the alternative is written down: a banned or offboarded supplier with no exception, a missing cost center on a PO-backed request, an amount over the quote threshold with no quotes and no sole-source reason. Warn when the rule is advisory, such as using the catalog when the item exists, and let the requester proceed with a justification. Run the checks on submit, in the form.

At submit, evaluate the preferred-supplier list, the spend threshold, category policy, and required fields against the same request record, then return every failure together.

Preferred-supplier list. Resolve the named supplier against the current preferred or contracted panel for that category and ship-to, not a list exported last quarter. A match is not "this vendor exists in the ERP." It is "this is the vendor procurement told the business to use for this buy." If they named someone else, say so, name the preferred alternative, and offer the exception path. If they named nobody and the category has a panel, require a choice before the request can leave. Match free-text names to a vendor ID, then apply the panel rule to that ID.

Spend threshold. Threshold here is buying method, not approver math. Above the published amount, policy may require two quotes, a bid event, catalog-only, or a sole-source justification. Below it, policy may forbid a free-text supplier when a punchout item exists. Put the threshold that fired in the message, plus the document to attach. Do not hide a DoA limit inside this check.

Category policy. The category decides which rule pack runs. Facilities wants a site code and often a work order. SaaS wants a security review. IT hardware often wants catalog or a standard image. If category is blank or obviously wrong, do not guess a pack. Send the requester through spend category auto-classification (or a human coder) first, then re-run policy. A wrong category applies the wrong rules.

Required fields. Completeness is a policy check. Cost center or internal order, ship-to or site, business justification, and any attachment the threshold or category demanded: quotes, statement of work, waiver. List each missing field with what good looks like: a live cost center, not last year's project code.

Order the list by what blocks submit. Blockers first, warnings second. Each line should name the rule, the value on the form, and the action: change supplier, attach quotes, fill site code, pick a reason.

A facilities request can look complete to the requester and still fail all four checks at submit. This walk-through is illustrative, not a measured case.

A plant facilities manager at a mid-size manufacturer submits compressor repair at Plant 4: $18,400, supplier Riverside Mechanical, the local firm that did the last overhaul. On the form it looks done.

At submit the checker should return all of this at once:

• Riverside Mechanical is not on the current preferred panel for HVAC and facilities maintenance. The contracted supplier is the national MRO provider added at the last renewal. Switch supplier, or attach a category-owner exception.
• $18,400 is above the $15,000 quote threshold for this category. Attach two quotes, or a sole-source justification that names why only this crew can do the work this week.
• Facilities category requires a site code and a work-order number. Both are empty.
• Cost center is blank. Approvers cannot post a PO without it.

That is the requester's own record, checked against rules procurement already published. The manager can switch supplier, fill Plant 4 and the work order, add the cost center, and resubmit in the same sitting, or attach the exception and the quotes. What they cannot do is send a hollow request into a director's queue.

If the same request had named the contracted supplier, sat under the quote threshold, and carried site, work order, and cost center, pre-check would pass. That pass only means the form is complete against those rules. Plant leadership still has to authorize the spend.

Clearing pre-check means the request is well-formed against written buying rules. It does not mean anyone with budget authority has approved the money.

Teams collapse the two when a green banner on the form feels like permission. Requesters forward the pass to a supplier. Buyers cut a PO because policy already cleared it. Audit then finds spend that never went through delegation-of-authority enforcement. Put the distinction in the UI copy: pre-check is completeness and policy fit. Authorization is a later step, with named approvers and limits.

After a pass, send the request to risk-based approval routing. Amount, category risk, new supplier, and exception flags still change who sees it. A low-amount catalog buy on a preferred supplier may be a candidate for low-risk auto-approval. A facilities job over the quote threshold with a sole-source attachment should not be. Auto-approval consumes a clean, low-risk record.

The checker is only as current as the supplier list and the exception log it reads. If the panel still names a vendor you offboarded, pre-check will pass a supplier you no longer want. If the panel never received the national MRO supplier from last renewal, it will block the vendor you told the plants to use. Refresh the list from the same source buying already uses to create POs, and show the as-of date when you block on panel membership.

The other trust-killer is blocking a policy the chief procurement officer (CPO), or the named delegate, already waived. Emergency plant work and geographic gaps in the panel produce real waivers. If the waiver lives in email, you will hard-stop the request leadership already allowed, and facilities will buy on a p-card during the outage. Encode exceptions as records: who granted them, for which category and supplier, through which date, for which sites. The fix list should treat a valid waiver as a satisfied check, not as a missing quote. When policy is contested or unpublished, do not automate it.

Intake and buying suites in this class, including Coupa, SAP Ariba, Zip, and ServiceNow, already sit where a requester hits submit. Use that form. A parallel chatbot that cannot write the same record the PO will use creates a second truth. Point the four checks at live master data. Warn-only at first on one category and watch what requesters do with the fix list. If they ignore warnings, the copy is unclear or the preferred alternative is not actually available. If they attach junk quotes to clear a block, the threshold rule needs a human look.

Pre-check catches rules you wrote. It will not catch a requester who is on-panel, under threshold, and still likely to end up off-contract later. That pattern is the job of off-contract spend prediction, which should flag for a category owner, not pretend to be another submit block.

Success is fewer policy rejects after the request has entered the queue, and no request that disappeared without a message. If approvers are still bouncing for missing site codes, the checker is not on the submit path yet.