What is maverick spend?
Maverick spend is money spent outside the company's agreed buying process: an unapproved supplier, no purchase order, or no sign-off. It usually happens because the official process is slower than a personal card.
Example
At Delta Fabrication, a supervisor needs 40 safety visors by Monday. The approved supplier ships in 6 days. They buy 40 at $9 from a retailer on a personal card, $360, and expense it. Finance sees it two weeks later with no PO and no budget code.
Across the company, 70 purchases like that a quarter come to $25K. None was dishonest. All of them skipped approval and the negotiated price.
In Atta
The fix Atta takes is to make the approved path the quick one. The supervisor asks the agent, which finds visors from allowed suppliers with delivery dates. Within their limit the order can go ahead without waiting, depending on the workspace's mode. Above his limit the request goes to the next approver in a chain.
With a card program, payment is by single-use virtual card capped at the approved total, so the card can't be used for anything else. Workspaces set which stores and brands are allowed, and a "never" preference is a filter in code, not a line in a prompt.
How to measure it
Compare invoices and card lines to purchase orders for a quarter. Spend with no PO, or with a supplier outside the approved list, is the numerator. Total spend is the denominator. In the visor example, $360 of one supervisor's month is maverick, and the useful question is why the approved route took 6 days.
Questions
Is maverick spend always bad?
No. It's often an urgent need the process couldn't meet. It's a problem because it skips pricing, approval and the record.
Related
- What is tail spend?Tail spend is the many small, infrequent purchases that add up to a fifth of spend but get no procurement attention. Definition with a worked example.
- What is spend under management?Spend under management is the share of total spend that flows through a managed process with contracts, approvals and visibility. With an example.
- Purchase approval softwareSet approval limits per role and build approval chains by amount. Approvers answer from Slack, WhatsApp or the app, and nothing is paid until the last step clears.