Most companies manage the requisition, approval and purchase order process completely separate, and differently, from how they control employee expense reporting and the process for reimbursing employees for out-of-pocket expenditures. With Coupa Expense Management, those distinctions begin to blur, particularly for any item an employee may order online.

A Better Buying Experience for Employees

Coupa breaks down one of the limitations of traditional e-procurement systems – users are limited by the catalogs hosted in the system, and by punchout suppliers approved by the purchasing organization. With Coupa’s iRequest functionality, employees can add virtually any item from virtually any website to their shopping cart, to submit as a requisition for manager approval. Once the manager approves that requisition, Coupa makes it easy to place that order online through its iBuy feature.

And now, with Coupa Expense Management, any item purchased this way can be automatically captured as a pre-approved purchase on an employee expense report.

More Control for Managers

In other words, an employee finds a great deal online, through Coupa’s unique ability to scour the web for items matching what the employee’s search. The employee exits the e-procurement system, goes to the website, and adds the item to their Coupa shopping cart using the iRequest feature. A manager reviews and approves that requisition, generating a purchase order. This gives the employee the green light to place the online order. Once the order is completed, employees can then cancel the purchase order and add the item to an expense report as a pre-approved line item.

Coupa blurs the line between purchasing and expense reimbursement by allowing managers to pre-approve employee purchases placed through Coupa iRequest and iBuy.

For the employee, they can find what they need, get approval for its purchase, place the online order, and add the item to an expense report – all from within one system. For managers, they can pre-approve purchases before the order is placed, and before the expense report is filed – and capture the cost of the item against the proper account and budget period.

Pre-approved purchases: another Coupa first that blurs the line between requisitions and expenses, and helps companies spend smarter, and save more, from the cloud!