Purchasing basics
What a purchase requisition is, and what belongs on one
A requisition is how the person who needs something asks permission before purchasing goes out and buys it. Written from the form a Thai factory actually uses, not from a textbook.
A purchase requisition — a PR — is an internal document in which one employee tells the company: I need this thing, for this reason, please approve it.
The part people get wrong: a PR is not an order. When you sign one, nobody has spoken to a supplier and the company owes nobody any money. It is a request, waiting for a decision.
Why bother with one
Small companies without a system buy things by walking over to the boss, or messaging purchasing on LINE. That works right up until somebody asks:
- Who approved this machine, and on what date?
- How many suppliers did we compare? Where are those quotations now?
- Why did the same part cost less last month?
The requisition is what answers those questions later. It leaves a trail: who asked, who agreed, when, and on the strength of what information.
What belongs on it
| Field | Why it earns its place |
|---|---|
| Requester and department | Who to ask when something is unclear, and whose budget this lands on |
| Requisition number | Referenced all the way through to the purchase order and the invoice |
| Date raised, date needed | Lets purchasing sort by real urgency instead of treating everything as urgent |
| Project or job number | Ties the cost to the work that caused it |
| Items, quantity, unit | The heart of it. A model or part number here prevents the wrong thing arriving |
| Estimated price | An approver has to know how much money they are agreeing to |
| Stock on hand | Stops you buying what is already on the shelf |
| Reason for the request | Replacement or new job — this is what lets an approver decide quickly |
| Attachments | Quotations, a photo of the broken part, the specification |
How it travels
- The requester fills it in and attaches the quotations
- The department head judges whether it is genuinely needed
- Finance or accounts checks it against the budget
- A director signs if it is over the delegated limit
- Purchasing raises the purchase order and sends it to the supplier
There is no correct sequence. A company of three and a company of three hundred route these differently, and both are right. What should be true in either is that everyone can see whose desk it is on.
What actually makes them slow
Requisitions rarely stall because an approver refuses to sign. They stall because:
- the paper is on the desk of somebody who is on leave or out on site, and nobody knows
- the quotation is in a chat thread rather than attached to the request
- the approver has no idea it is their turn
- the paperwork is complete but cannot be found when someone audits it
None of those is a problem with the form. They are problems with how the document travels — a different thing entirely, and not one a paper form can fix.
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