Budget rules, approvals, and department roll-ups
Set spending guardrails, route purchases through an approval queue, and use the department roll-up to find rate spread on duplicate contracts.
Budget rules
Buyer → Budget rules lets you define spending guardrails for software purchases. Each rule has a name, a description, and the conditions it enforces. Rules are evaluated automatically at checkout: when a purchase trips a rule, it is held for approval instead of completing silently.
The approval queue
Buyer → Approvals is the procurement control room:
- Open actions and the approval queue itself
- An SLA policy so requests do not sit unanswered
- Dispatch runs showing who was asked to approve and when
- Funnel analytics on how long approvals take and where they stall
Approvers act directly from the queue; buyers see the order held at checkout until the decision lands.
How checkout enforcement works
Every checkout through the Cubbie cart runs the same pipeline: budget rules are checked first, approval gating applies if a rule requires it, and only then does payment proceed. This holds for paid checkouts and zero-charge orders alike, so trials and free tiers still leave an audit trail.
Departments and roll-up
Buyer → Departments gives you the cross-department view: every vendor where your company holds two or more active contracts, matched on canonical vendor name. Legal-entity suffixes such as LLC and Inc are stripped, so the same vendor surfaces as one row no matter how each department spelled it.
For each vendor group you see the per-seat rate spread — the gap between your cheapest and most expensive contract for the same product. That spread is your consolidation lever: bring every department to the best rate you already negotiated, or merge the contracts entirely.
Set up in this order
1. Create budget rules that mirror your actual purchasing policy.
2. Confirm approvers and the SLA in the approvals area.
3. Review the department roll-up quarterly for rate spread and duplicate contracts.