Construction purchase-approval checklist
Most site purchases go wrong before anyone signs anything — an indent with no quantity basis, a rate nobody compared, an approval that happened on WhatsApp. These are the checks to run at each step, and what to look at when you run them.
Opens in Excel, Google Sheets or LibreOffice, with Done / Owner / Notes columns to fill in. Free to use and share — no sign-up, no email required.
How to use it
- Print it, or open the file in Excel or Google Sheets and use the Done / Owner / Notes columns.
- Run it against three purchases you made last month — a small one, a big one and an urgent one. The urgent one is where the control breaks.
- Anything you cannot evidence in writing is a gap, even if everyone remembers it going fine.
Before the indent leaves site
Why it matters. A purchase with no work attached to it cannot be reconciled later, and it is the easiest place for quantity to inflate.
What to look at. Does the indent form have a project and BOQ/item field, and is it filled?
Why it matters. "Send 120 m" and "120 m per the BOQ line" look the same on paper and behave very differently at reconciliation.
What to look at. Ask the person who raised it how they arrived at the number.
Why it matters. Two sites buying the same item in the same week at two rates is the most common avoidable loss in multi-site work.
What to look at. Stock register or system stock at the time of the indent.
Why it matters. Fake urgency is how rate comparison gets skipped. If everything is urgent, nothing is.
What to look at. Compare required-by dates against actual delivery dates for last month.
Why it matters. Vendors quoting different specifications are not comparable, and the difference surfaces as a debit note later.
What to look at. Could a vendor quote from this line without phoning you?
Getting a rate you can defend
Why it matters. Ad-hoc vendors are where compliance problems and fake invoices enter.
What to look at. Vendor master: GSTIN, PAN, bank account, date added, who added them.
Why it matters. One quote is a price, not a rate. The threshold is yours to set — what matters is that it exists and is followed.
What to look at. Written quotes against one specification, dated.
Why it matters. Freight, loading, GST treatment and payment terms routinely move the winner.
What to look at. Does the comparison sheet have columns for freight and terms?
Why it matters. Rate contracts stop being useful the moment buyers forget they exist.
What to look at. List of live rate contracts, and whether the last five POs used them.
Why it matters. There are good reasons — delivery, quality, credit. An unwritten reason looks identical to a kickback in an audit.
What to look at. A reason field on the comparison, not a verbal explanation.
Approval that leaves a trail
Why it matters. Undefined limits mean either everything reaches the owner or nothing does.
What to look at. A written matrix: value band → approver. One page is enough.
Why it matters. Approving a figure without its alternatives is a signature, not a decision.
What to look at. What is attached to the approval request.
Why it matters. This is the record that protects the approver as much as the company.
What to look at. Can you produce the approval for a purchase made six months ago in under a minute?
Why it matters. Three POs of ₹49,000 against a ₹50,000 limit is the oldest trick in procurement.
What to look at. Same vendor, same item, same week — sort last quarter's POs and check.
Receipt and payment
Why it matters. Without a receipt record, the bill becomes the only evidence of what arrived.
What to look at. Receipt note with quantity received vs ordered, signed at site.
Why it matters. Recorded three weeks later, it becomes an argument. Recorded on the day, it becomes a debit note.
What to look at. How many debit notes were raised last quarter, and how fast.
Why it matters. This single check catches rate creep, quantity inflation and duplicate billing.
What to look at. Who does the three-way check, and what happens when it fails.
Why it matters. An advance nobody recovered is a loss that never appears as one.
What to look at. Open advances by vendor, with age.
What the trail looks like when it works
Illustrative — sample data, not a customer record.
Doing this without remembering to
sotyn.ai runs this chain as one linked record — indent against a BOQ line, RFQ comparison, value-based L1/L2 approval with the comparison attached, PO, receiving and debit note, all traceable from the original request.
A demo is 20 minutes on your own trades and project sizes. Nothing is booked until you confirm a time.
See this on your own numbers
A 20-minute walkthrough on your trades and project sizes — not a slideshow. Three fields and we will call you back.