Budget control software that checks before you buy
Most budget reports tell you what happened last month. Procurer checks the budget at the moment someone asks to spend, while there is still time to say no. Every purchase request shows the budget, what is already spent, what is committed on open purchase orders and what is left, so approvers decide with the numbers in front of them.
Spent, committed and remaining on every request
A budget in Procurer has four numbers, and each one updates on its own:
- Budget: the amount for the period, for example 120 000 USD for IT in the quarter.
- Committed: open purchase orders that are approved but not yet invoiced. This is the number spreadsheets miss.
- Spent: invoices matched and recorded against the budget.
- Remaining: budget minus committed minus spent, shown on every request before approval.
Take an IT budget of 120 000 USD for the quarter with 71 000 USD spent and 28 000 USD committed on open POs. The remaining balance is 21 000 USD, not the 49 000 USD a spend report would show. A 24 000 USD server request is flagged as over budget on the approval screen, before anyone signs a PO.
Budgets by department, project and GL account
On Team (149 USD per month), budgets are set per department, and every request shows the department's remaining balance. From Business (299 USD per month), budgets can be set per department, per project and per GL account, with commitments and actuals tracked for each.
- Department budgets for the owners who approve day to day.
- Project budgets for client work, capital projects or events, where one project draws from several departments.
- GL account budgets that mirror your chart of accounts, so finance can compare spend with the accounting plan line by line.
- Periods by month, quarter or year, with the option to carry unused budget forward.
A request can hit more than one budget at once: a laptop for a client project counts against the IT department, the project and the hardware GL account. Procurer shows the most restrictive remaining balance.
What happens when a request goes over budget
A warning alone is not budget control. From Business, approval rules can use budget status as a condition:
- Requests within budget follow the normal approval chain.
- Requests over budget add a finance approval step automatically.
- Requests over budget by more than a set amount or percentage can go to the CFO.
- Budget owners can move amounts between their own budgets, with the transfer recorded in the audit log.
On Team, the over-budget flag is shown to every approver, and the 2 approval steps can include finance. See purchase order approval software for the full rule options.
Budget owners stop asking finance what is left
The department head who owns a budget sees it live: every approved request, every open PO, every matched invoice. Nobody waits for the month-end report to know whether the team can afford the conference booth. Finance stops answering the same question in chat, and the Controller closes the month with commitments already known, because every open PO is visible against its budget. The monthly picture by supplier and category is on spend analytics software.
Setting up budgets in an afternoon
You can type budgets in, or import them from a CSV with department, project, GL account, period and amount. Existing open POs can be imported too, so commitments are right from day one. When accounting is connected (QuickBooks Online or Xero on every plan, NetSuite or Sage Intacct on Scale), GL accounts and departments or classes come from your ledger, so budget lines match the accounting codes finance already uses. See procurement software integrations and the broader view on spend management software.
What is budget control software?
It is software that checks spending against budgets before the purchase is made, not after. In Procurer, every purchase request shows the budget, spent, committed and remaining amounts, and rules can route over-budget requests to finance.
What is the difference between committed and spent?
Committed is money promised on approved purchase orders that are not yet invoiced. Spent is money on matched invoices. Remaining budget subtracts both, so an open order is never counted as free money.
Which plan includes project and GL budgets?
Team includes department budgets. Business, Scale and Enterprise add budgets by project and GL account with commitments and actuals, and approval rules that use budget status.
Can a request be blocked when it is over budget?
From Business, rules can add finance or CFO approval to any over-budget request, so it cannot become a PO without that approval. On Team, the over-budget warning is shown to every approver.
Do budgets sync with our accounting system?
GL accounts and departments or classes come from QuickBooks Online or Xero on every plan and from NetSuite or Sage Intacct on Scale, so budgets use the same codes as your ledger.
Know what is left in every budget
Try the demo to see the budget impact of a request, then create your account and load your own budgets.