Give every spend request a decision-ready brief
Approvers receive one consistent brief with cost, business case, duplication check, risks, and an explicit approve-or-decline decision.
The problem
Purchase requests arrive as persuasive messages without total cost, alternatives, owner, security review, or success criteria.
What you get
A working system with the steps, tools, checkpoints, and expected return made explicit.
- Setup
- 45 minutes
- Back each week
- 2 hours
- Difficulty
- assisted
Expected return
The working case
A planning estimate, not a guaranteed result. Measure the first four weeks against your own baseline.
96
hours returned per year
At 2 hours/week across 48 working weeks.
1
week to earn back setup
Compare the setup estimate with the weekly time returned.
Operating contract
Input
The source material, constraints, and examples a human would need to do this work well.
Checkpoint
A person reviews judgment calls, sensitive content, unfamiliar tools, and irreversible actions.
Success signal
Track time returned, corrections required, and exceptions. Keep it only if the measured result compounds.
Before you start
- ·Approval thresholds
- ·Current vendor inventory
The steps
- 01
Create an intake form for owner, problem, users, full-term cost, alternatives, data access, and success measure.
- 02
Check the request against the approved vendor and software inventory.
- 03
Produce a neutral decision brief and flag every unanswered control question.
Copy this prompt
Turn this request into a neutral spend brief: need, total cost, alternatives, overlap, security/data implications, owner, success metric, and unanswered questions. Do not recommend approval when a required field is missing. Request: [form]
- 04
Route to the correct human approvers based on amount and risk; record the decision and renewal date.
What it runs on
Where this goes wrong
- AI never approves spend.
- Annual cost, implementation cost, and renewal terms must remain visible.
Definition of done
Run it for four weeks. Then make it earn its place.
- □ Baseline the manual time before launch.
- □ Keep a human approval step for consequential output.
- □ Record corrections and exceptions, not just successes.
- □ Expand, revise, or retire it after the first review.
Build the system around it
Related workflows
If this one stops working, tell us. Three reports in a month and it leaves the library until a person has looked at it again.