How to Improve Requisition Management for Smoother Workflows

Purchase requests are more than just employees asking for resources—they ensure compliance with company policies and prevent unnecessary spending. 

Despite their importance, the burden of filling out requisition forms and chasing approvals falls on employees, distracting them from their actual work. Ultimately, employees face delays in getting the needed resources, with little visibility into approval timelines—impacting overall efficiency.

So, if you want to streamline your purchase requisition process for better compliance and cost control without overburdening employees, this blog post will explore how to improve requisition management.

What Is Requisition Management?

Requisition management is the process of handling purchase requests within a company. Employees submit requests for needed resources, which go through approvals to ensure budget control and policy compliance. 

A well-structured requisition process reduces unnecessary spending and ensures employees receive what they need without delays and back-and-forth communication.

However, managing requisitions isn’t always straightforward. 

Every request must comply with company policies, budget limits, and approval hierarchies. Managing these layers of guidelines slows down the process, frustrating employees and procurement teams alike. 

Understanding how the requisition process works helps identify where these inefficiencies arise and how to address them.

What Is the Purchase Requisition Process?

For most companies, the purchase requisition process is simple—employees fill out a form, get manager approval, and the procurement team places an order with preferred vendors. 

However, as companies grow, the process becomes more complex with stricter policies and additional approval layers. 

Here’s a breakdown of the six-step requisition process that ensures proper verification, minimizes errors, and improves cost control.

1. Fill out the Purchase Request Form

The first step in the process is for the employee to complete a purchase request form, specifying the resources they need—whether it’s office supplies, equipment, or services. 

This form includes detailed descriptions, quantities, and any relevant specifications to ensure clarity in what is being requested.

Challenges:

• Lack of standardization: Employees miss crucial details when forms don’t have a clear structure or mandatory fields, leading to confusion or additional follow-ups.
• Time-consuming: Employees see this step as bureaucratic, especially as they have to provide extensive justification or attach supporting documents. This delays submissions and results in incomplete forms.
• Difficulty understanding requirements: Employees unfamiliar with procurement guidelines struggle to provide accurate details, leading to requests that don’t meet company standards or require revisions.

2. Obtain Approvals From Managers

Once the request form is completed, it is submitted for managerial approval. 

Managers review the request to assess its necessity, compliance with departmental goals, and overall relevance to the team's needs. 

Approvals are typically required at this stage to ensure that the purchase aligns with company objectives and priorities.

Challenges:

• Approval bottlenecks: Managers have multiple responsibilities, making approvals a lower priority. If managers are unavailable, requests get stuck in the queue, delaying necessary purchases.
• Lack of visibility: Employees do not receive updates on approval status, leading to frustration and repeated follow-ups.

3. Validate Internal Policies

After the manager approves it, the purchase request is reviewed against internal policies. 

This step ensures that the requested resources meet company guidelines, such as procurement processes, vendor preferences, and any compliance regulations. 

This validation helps avoid unauthorized or non-compliant purchases.

Challenges:

• Complex and evolving policies: As companies grow, procurement policies become more detailed, making it harder for employees to keep up. 
• Multiple policy layers: Some purchases need to align with multiple internal policies, such as IT security for software purchases or sustainability guidelines for office supplies, making validation more complicated.

4. Check Inventory

Next, the procurement team checks the inventory to determine whether the requested resources are available. 

If the requested items are already in stock, the resources are sent over directly, eliminating unnecessary purchases and ensuring better resource utilization.

Challenges:

• Limited integration: In organizations without an automated system, procurement teams manually check inventory, which adds delays.

5. Assess Alignment With the Budget

The request is evaluated before purchasing to ensure it aligns with the allocated budget. 

The procurement team checks if the cost of the requested items fits within the approved budget, ensuring that spending remains within financial constraints. 

If the request exceeds the budget, further adjustments or approvals are required.

Challenges:

• Budget restrictions: Some requests may be urgent but exceed allocated budgets, leading to delays as departments negotiate approvals or reallocate funds.

6. Create the Purchase Order

Once all approvals and validations are completed, the purchase requisition is converted into a purchase order. 

The purchase order is a formal document sent to the vendor detailing the items or services to be delivered, agreed-upon prices, and other transaction terms. This step finalizes the purchase process and initiates the delivery of goods or services.

Challenges:

• Errors from previous steps carry over: Mistakes in the requisition process—such as incorrect quantities or vendor details—result in inaccurate purchase orders, requiring additional corrections.

Purchase Requisition Vs Purchase Order  

A purchase requisition is a document teams use to communicate resource needs and seek approval before any purchase is processed, whereas a purchase order is a formal agreement with a vendor to deliver specified goods.

For example, if a team realizes they need stationery items, they can buy them themselves and later submit a reimbursement request or use corporate cards. 

However, this becomes problematic when employees purchase from random vendors, leading the company to pay higher prices. The discounts negotiated with approved vendors are wasted.

This is where a purchase requisition allows the procurement team to check if the requested resources are already available, in line with internal policies, and sourced from approved vendors.

How to Improve Requisition Management

Effective requisition management requires reducing manual effort, improving visibility, and ensuring compliance without adding unnecessary friction. 

Here’s how you can streamline the process:

1. Automate Purchase Requisitions

Manually handling requisitions creates inefficiencies, delays, and compliance risks. Automation simplifies the process so that the requests follow proper workflows without manual intervention.

Here’s how Pluto helps you automate purchase requisitions:

• Custom forms for departments: Pluto enables you to create department-specific requisition forms, ensuring employees provide only the necessary details relevant to their needs.
• Granular controls: You can set specific rules for different request types—such as requiring additional approvals for IT purchases or flagging policy violations automatically.
• No-code approval workflows: Pluto’s no-code workflow builder allows you to create tailored approval processes easily, ensuring the right people review each request.
• Automated policy checks: Instead of employees manually referencing policies, Pluto automatically validates requests against company rules, flagging non-compliant ones.
• Instant notifications: Managers receive automatic approval requests, reducing bottlenecks. They can approve or reject requests directly from the platform without back-and-forth emails.

2. Improve System Integrations

A requisition system should not operate in isolation. 

It needs to connect seamlessly with other business tools to reduce redundant work and improve efficiency.

• Enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools: Connecting requisition systems to ERP software allows procurement teams to check available inventory in real time. This prevents unnecessary purchases and ensures better resource allocation.
• Procure-to-pay (P2P) process: Approved requisitions should automatically convert into purchase orders, eliminating the need for manual data entry and reducing processing time.
• Financial systems: Linking requisition management with accounting systems ensures purchases align with budget allocations, reducing overspending risks.

Pluto integrates with ERPs and accounting systems to streamline the purchasing process without creating silos. By managing the entire procurement workflow, it automatically converts approved purchase requisitions into purchase orders, which are then processed directly in the ERP. 

3. Create a Centralized System

Many inefficiencies arise when different teams use separate tools, spreadsheets, or email chains for requisition management. A centralized platform like Pluto ensures full visibility into the entire process.

• Single source of truth: All purchase requests, approvals, and policy checks are stored in one place, reducing miscommunication.
• Transparency: Employees can track the status of their requests instead of repeatedly following up with managers or procurement teams.
• Audit-ready records: A unified system ensures all transactions are logged and easily retrievable for audits or compliance checks.

4. Train Employees on Workflows & Approvals

A well-structured process is only effective if employees use it correctly. 

Lack of awareness about procurement policies and approval workflows leads to repeated errors and unnecessary delays.

Educating employees on filling out requisition forms correctly the first time reduces back-and-forth revisions. They should know which approvals are required for different types of requests to prevent unexpected rejections.

Moreover, clear guidance on preferred vendors, spending limits, and internal policies helps employees make informed requests.

An automated procurement platform embeds all this information onto the system making requisition management easier for employees as well as procurement teams. 

5. Hold Everyone Accountable

Even with automation, centralized systems, and training, accountability is key to maintaining an efficient requisition process.

Each step in the process should have a defined owner, whether it’s the requestor, approver, or procurement team.

Procurement teams should analyze trends—such as frequent delays, high rejection rates, or compliance issues—to identify bottlenecks and improve the process.

A structured accountability system ensures that requisition management remains efficient and aligned with business goals.

Creating an Efficient Requisition Workflow with Pluto

With the right tools and strategies in place, the purchase requisition process transforms from a time-consuming, manual task to a streamlined, efficient workflow. 

When using a system like Pluto, these changes are even more pronounced as automation, system integrations, and custom workflows create a seamless experience. 

What once was a slow, fragmented workflow is now an integrated, automated system that ensures speed, accuracy, and compliance across the board. 

Employees submit requests confidently, managers approve them quickly, and procurement teams easily handle orders—all within one unified system.

An effective requisition workflow with Pluto looks like this:

1. Employees fill out a customized requisition form with automated fields and policy checks.
2. Managers automatically receive approval requests with pre-set approval workflows, and their decisions are tracked in real time.
3. Once approved, requests are converted into purchase orders automatically.
4. A centralized system ensures transparency, giving everyone complete visibility into each request’s status.
5. Employees are educated on policies, ensuring smooth compliance and reducing errors.

With this improved workflow, companies can experience faster procurement cycles, reduced manual errors, better budget control, and overall increased operational efficiency.

Requisition Management: A Shared Responsibility

Requisition management is a shared responsibility that directly impacts the organization’s operational efficiency. Each department—whether employees submitting requests, managers approving them, or the procurement team overseeing inventory—contributes to ensuring timely approvals and smooth workflows. When all teams align, the process becomes streamlined, minimizing delays and bottlenecks.

By using a platform like Pluto, you can automate these tasks, enforce compliance, and track accountability throughout the process. This unified system reduces friction, accelerates decision-making, and improves resource management, leading to more efficient operations across the organization.

Book a demo with Pluto today and discover how automation improves your requisition workflows.