Indirect spend (supplies, services, IT, travel) represents a major share of an SME's expenses but often stays under the radar. Here is how to take back control.
Procura team · May 2026 · 7 min readDirect purchases are those that go directly into the product or service sold. For a pharmacy: medicines. For a builder: cement and steel. For a restaurant: food.
Indirect purchases are everything else. Office supplies, IT (hardware and licenses), services (legal, accounting, consulting), travel and expenses, marketing, non-core subcontracting, maintenance, energy, telecoms.
The share of indirects depends on the sector but is rarely negligible. In services, it can be the majority of spend. In manufacturing, it's structurally lower but still significant.
Four structural reasons. First, dispersion: an 80,000 XOF print cartridge purchase looks too small to deserve a formal procurement process. Multiplied 50 times a year, it adds up.
Second, diffusion: indirect purchases are triggered by every department (HR, marketing, IT, finance), not by a centralized buyer. Global visibility doesn't exist anywhere.
Third, recurrence: many indirects are auto-renewals (software subscriptions, maintenance contracts). Once set up, no one reviews them.
Fourth, ease of bypass: corporate cards, personal Mobile Money reimbursed, invoice sent directly to the accountant. All shortcuts around the Procure-to-Pay cycle.
Three cost forms. Direct cost: without competitive bidding, the price paid is higher than the market price. On recurring indirects, the cumulative gap over a year can represent a meaningful share of the budget.
Compliance cost: an off-process purchase isn't approved, isn't traced, isn't tied to a PO. When the invoice arrives, the accountant books it, but with no audit trail. That's exactly what the tax authority hunts for in an audit.
Opportunity cost: the time departments spend managing their own small purchases is time they don't spend on their core mission.
Step 1, map. Pull 12 months of class 6 expense statements, bank statements and expense reports. Categorize into 8-12 indirect categories. Identify the 80% of volume concentrated on 20% of suppliers.
Step 2, sign framework contracts. On the highest-volume categories (IT, telecoms, travel), sign a framework with 1-2 preferred suppliers at negotiated rates. This typically covers the majority of indirect purchases.
Step 3, route every indirect above a threshold (e.g. 100,000 XOF) through a formal purchase request. Below, allow corporate cards with automatic categorization.
Step 4, track monthly. Dashboards by category, by department, by supplier. Measurement alone creates the pressure needed for behavior change.
Procura treats indirect purchases the same way as direct ones: everything goes through the PR-PO-invoice-payment cycle. With approval thresholds adapted to amount.
The catalog module lets you pre-define recurring references (cartridges, subscriptions, supplies) from signed framework contracts. End users order self-service within the negotiated scope.
The spend-analysis dashboard breaks down purchases by category, department and supplier. Context-aware AI automatically categorizes new spend to keep the map up to date.
See how Procura digitizes your SYSCOHADA procurement cycle, from request to payment.