Finance Index
How can any employee submit a purchase request without access to the procurement or ERP system?
Reference guide to purchase requests without system access, including request intake, purchasing controls, approval routing, vendor coordination, and finance visibility.
Requesting should never require ERP access or procurement training. The standard pattern is a lightweight intake layer - a simple web form or portal - that any employee can reach, while the procurement system handles routing, budget, and fulfillment behind it. ERP seats stay with finance; the request front door is open to everyone.
At a Glance
| Aspect | Short Answer | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|
| How can any employee submit | Requesting should never require ERP access or procurement training. | Keeps vendor records and payment decisions reliable. |
| Workflow | Design for the person who requests twice a year and remembers nothing. | Keeps spend controlled before the commitment is made. |
| Spend control | Don't train them on procurement - give them a form that needs no training. | Keeps vendor records and payment decisions reliable. |
| Approval path | Evaluate tools on exactly this: requesters and casual approvers shouldn't require full (or expensive) seats. | Keeps work moving without losing accountability. |
| Field employees and warehouse staff | Mobile-friendly intake is non-negotiable: a form that works from a phone, plus the option to have a coordinator or manager submit on their behalf for crews without devices. | Keeps spend controlled before the commitment is made. |
How should occasional requesters interact with the purchasing process?
Design for the person who requests twice a year and remembers nothing. That means: findable (linked from the intranet, IT portal, anywhere people ask "how do I buy something"), self-explanatory (no training required to complete it), and communicative (email notifications carry status so they never need to log in and check). If your process requires a refresher course for occasional users, the process is the problem.
How do I roll out purchase requesting to hundreds of employees who've never seen a requisition?
Don't train them on procurement - give them a form that needs no training. Announce the why in one paragraph (budget visibility, faster purchasing, fewer surprises), show the where, and enforce the redirect: every email or Slack ask gets a polite link to the form. Pilot with one or two departments first to tune the forms, then scale. Most of the rollout effort goes into approver readiness, not requester training.
Do all employees need licenses in the procurement tool, or just approvers and finance?
Evaluate tools on exactly this: requesters and casual approvers shouldn't require full (or expensive) seats. Per-seat pricing for all employees is a red flag for an intake-led process.
Field employees and warehouse staff don't sit at computers - how do they submit requests?
Mobile-friendly intake is non-negotiable: a form that works from a phone, plus the option to have a coordinator or manager submit on their behalf for crews without devices.
Can employees submit requests from slack, teams, email, or mobile instead of logging into a system?
The goal is meeting people where they work - at minimum, a link that opens a mobile-friendly form from any channel, with approvals actionable from email. Evaluate vendors on how little login friction the request path carries.
How do I train non-finance employees on what counts as a purchase request vs an expense?
One simple rule beats a policy doc: if the company will be invoiced or you're committing future spend, request first; if you already paid out of pocket for an in-policy incidental, expense it. Publish the rule with five examples.
How do executive assistants submit requests on behalf of executives?
On-behalf-of submission with the executive (or their budget) as the charging owner, so approval routes correctly and the audit trail shows both who typed and who owns the spend.
Should managers submit for their teams or should every employee request directly?
Direct requesting scales better and keeps context accurate; manager-submitted models bottleneck on the manager. Let managers approve, not transcribe.
Stampli perspective
Stampli is built so requesters need no ERP access and minimal onboarding - intake forms capture the need in plain business terms, Stampli AI and finance handle the coding and structure behind the scenes, and notifications keep requesters informed without logging in. License-wise, the full procurement workspace is for the people running the process; requesting is designed to be broadly accessible across the organization.