How to Automate purchase Requisition Without Disrupting Workflows

Procurement teams aren’t debating whether to automate—they’re deciding how much longer they can survive without it. Every day without automation is another day spent chasing approvals, fixing incomplete requests, and explaining—again—why budgets don’t allow last-minute software buys.

Meanwhile, teams are moving fast, expecting procurement to keep up. IT needs laptops for a sudden hiring surge. Marketing wants campaign funds released yesterday. And with companies decentralizing purchasing, more teams are buying independently—without proper approvals, contract checks, or negotiated pricing. Suddenly, procurement isn’t just slow—it’s losing control.

This isn’t just inefficiency—it’s risk. Unvetted suppliers. Duplicate contracts. Budgets blown because no one caught the auto-renewal clause in that SaaS agreement. At this point, automation isn’t just about working faster. It’s about keeping procurement relevant—staying in control, enforcing compliance, and having time to focus on the suppliers and strategies impacting the bottom line.

So, in this blog post, we will look at how, in particular, you can automate the requisition process and get teams the resources they need. 

What Is an Automated Requisition?

An automated requisition is a process that improves the creation, approval, and tracking of purchase requests within an organization. It replaces manual paperwork, emails, and spreadsheets with a centralized system.

Employees or departments submit purchase requisitions through an e-procurement system, which pulls data from pre-approved suppliers, product catalogs, and pricing databases. The system automatically checks these requests against set rules or routes them to the appropriate approvers based on spending limits, purchase categories, or department budgets. 

Once approved, the requisition converts into a purchase order. The process is integrated with enterprise resource planning (ERP) or procure-to-pay (P2P) systems, allowing real-time budget tracking and policy enforcement. 

Related Read: Procurement Automation: Top 4 Procurement Process to Automate

Before You Automate Requisition: What You Need to Know

On paper, automating requisition makes procurement more efficient—fewer delays, better compliance, and less back-and-forth between teams. But in reality, automation doesn’t instantly solve all the challenges. Instead, it introduces new roadblocks, especially when employees outside procurement struggle to adopt the system.

The core challenge is the tool itself. Many companies invest in automation to reduce complexity, yet Amazon’s 2024 State of Procurement Report highlighted how nearly half (47%) of procurement professionals find their systems and processes complex. 

Procurement teams across industries struggle with the complexity of internal systems and processes. 

If an automated requisition tool isn’t intuitive or flexible, employees resort to workarounds—bypassing approval workflows or making off-system purchases, circling back to lack of compliance. 

So, while these tools are designed to enforce policies, procurement teams find it challenging to ensure that employees follow them. In fact, only 46% of procurement leaders in the same report felt confident that purchases outside their team are made according to policy.

Procurement doesn’t work in isolation; it needs to align with finance, compliance, legal, and technology teams. However, only 39% of business leaders in the same report felt that procurement is highly coordinated with these departments. 

So, the key isn’t just automating requisition—it’s ensuring that automation actually works for procurement, employees, and every other stakeholder involved.

How Do You Automate Purchase Requisition?

Automating requisition workflows requires more than just digitizing paper forms. It involves integrating tools that streamline each stage, from submission to approval to purchase order generation. 

Here’s how Pluto handles the typical procurement challenges, improving the speed and accuracy of the requisition process.

1. Requisition Creation

Before automation:

Employees rely on disconnected tools, email chains, or manually filled forms. This leads to inconsistencies and missing details. Each department has its own process, causing confusion and delays. Procurement teams are burdened with the need to clarify incomplete or incorrect requisitions before they can be processed.

After automation:

Pluto offers a centralized platform where employees from all departments fill out requisitions in one place. The platform ensures requisitions are consistent and complete by standardizing the form across the organization. You can create customized department-specific forms, ensuring that only the required fields are presented. 

No more chasing down incomplete forms—everything is captured in a single dashboard. This centralization also ensures that procurement teams get a clear, complete view of all requisitions in one place.

2. Approval Workflow

Before automation:

The approval process typically involves several manual steps: requisitions are emailed or physically routed to approvers, who may be absent or unavailable, leading to delays. There’s no clear visibility into where the requisition is in the approval cycle. Managers rely on email chains, Slack or spreadsheets to track requests, resulting in approvals that bypass established workflows or miss certain key stakeholders.

After automation:

Pluto’s no-code workflow builder automates the routing of requisitions based on predefined approval rules. 

For example, an IT purchase requires both department approval and additional sign-off from the IT and finance department (if it exceeds a specific threshold). 

Automated approval triggers ensure that each requisition follows the correct process and that real-time status updates are available to all stakeholders.

Managers are instantly notified and can approve or reject requests directly within the platform. With everything tracked in real time, procurement teams have complete visibility into the approval process.

3. Policy Compliance

Before automation:

Compliance requires manual checks against company policies, which is time-consuming and prone to error. Employees inadvertently violate purchasing policies, creating compliance risks that result in audit issues or budgetary overruns. This issue is compounded when different teams interpret policies differently or when policies change frequently.

After automation:

Pluto automates policy compliance by validating each requisition against predefined rules. If a request violates any policy—whether it exceeds budget limits, requests unauthorized products, or requires additional approvals—Pluto automatically flags it. This reduces compliance risks and ensures that employees follow the right procedures.

4. Data Entry and Purchase Order Creation

Before automation:

After a requisition is approved, procurement teams manually enter data into purchase order systems, which adds friction to the process and increases the chances of errors and delays. This manual entry is time-consuming, especially in large organizations with high volumes of requisitions, leading to inefficiencies and slower procurement cycles.

After automation:

Pluto automates the conversion of approved requisitions into purchase orders, eliminating the need for manual data entry. Once a requisition is approved, the system automatically generates the purchase order. It integrates with ERPs, enabling real-time updates to the financial systems. This reduces manual data entry time and ensures consistency across all platforms, improving data accuracy and speeding up the procurement process.

5. Tracking and Transparency

Before automation:

Without a centralized system, employees and procurement teams struggle to track the status of requisitions. Employees frequently follow up with managers or procurement teams through emails to check on the status of their requests, and procurement teams lack visibility into the status of each request, leading to delays or miscommunication. 

Managers also struggle to gain a high-level overview of requisition trends, such as frequent bottlenecks or recurring issues with certain departments or types of purchases.

After automation:

Pluto provides a centralized, real-time dashboard for tracking requisition statuses, approvals, and compliance across the organization. 

Employees can instantly check the status of their requests, reducing the need for follow-up communication. Procurement teams also gain visibility into the flow of requests, allowing them to monitor approval times, flag recurring issues, and identify inefficiencies. 

This transparency enhances communication and accelerates decision-making across the team.

6. Audit and Reporting

Before automation:
Audit readiness is a tedious process when systems are decentralized. Procurement teams manually compile data from emails, spreadsheets, and different software systems, which increases the chances of missing information. 

After automation:

Pluto stores all requisition data—including approvals, policy checks, and purchase orders—in one centralized system. This unified record of all transactions ensures that every step of the procurement process is auditable. Real-time reports are generated on spending, compliance, and performance metrics, simplifying the audit process. 

Learn More: Step-By-Step Guide for an Effective Procurement Audit (With Checklist)

Requisition Automation Doesn’t Have to Be Complicated 

Change isn’t easy, especially when you have an existing system that works—flaws and all. Many hesitate to automate requisition because they fear a complex transition, employee resistance, or added work instead of efficiency. 

But automation doesn’t have to be tedious. With the right tool, processes are simplified not just for procurement but also for employees, finance teams, and the entire organization.

Pluto ensures requisition automation is seamless. 

Employees don’t need to struggle with multiple platforms—requests are centralized in one place, following company policies effortlessly. Approvers get instant notifications, reducing bottlenecks. Finance gains real-time visibility into spending without manual tracking. Instead of adding friction, Pluto removes it, creating a system that works for everyone.

Automation isn’t just possible—it’s easy when done right. With Pluto, procurement teams can streamline requisition management without disrupting workflows. 

Book a demo today to see how simple and efficient requisition automation can get with Pluto.