Maverick spend
Purchases made outside the company's agreed buying process, contracts or preferred suppliers.
In short
- It usually happens because the approved route is slower or harder than just buying.
- It costs money through missed negotiated prices and weaker controls.
- The fix is often making the right way easier, not adding more rules.
Maverick spend, also called rogue or off-contract spend, is buying that bypasses the processes and agreements a company has put in place. An employee orders supplies from a website instead of the contracted supplier, a manager signs up for software on a personal card, or a team hires a contractor without a purchase order.
Why it happens
- The approved process is slow, and the need is urgent.
- People don't know a contract or preferred supplier exists.
- The preferred supplier doesn't stock what is needed.
- Buying on a card is simply easier than raising a requisition.
What it costs
The direct cost is paying more than the negotiated price. Indirect costs are often bigger: suppliers who haven't been vetted for risk or security, spending that doesn't count toward volume discounts, duplicate subscriptions, and purchases that are hard to see until the invoice or card statement arrives.
Reducing it
Policing alone rarely works. What helps most is making compliant buying the path of least resistance: catalogs of preferred items, fast approvals for small purchases, cards restricted to approved merchants, and clear communication about which suppliers to use. Spend analysis that includes card and expense data shows where maverick spend is concentrated. Effort goes where it pays.
Worked example
Office supplies, two ways
A company has a contract with an office supplier at 22% below list price. A spend review shows $86,000 a year of office supplies bought on cards from other retailers at roughly list price. Adding the contracted supplier as a punch-out catalog in the purchasing system moves most of that spend onto the contract and saves about $17,000 a year.