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Tail Sourcing
Purchases

Procurement catalogs: hosted, supplier and punchout

A catalog is the cheapest control in procurement. It decides what people buy and at what price before anyone opens an approval workflow.

Most tail spend leakage is not a negotiation failure. It is a routing failure: the requester did not know where to buy, so they bought wherever was fastest. A catalog removes that decision — the item, the supplier and the price are already agreed.

There is no single catalog model that fits every category, which is why Tail Sourcing supports four. The differences come down to two questions: who maintains the items, and who is allowed to see them.

Hosted catalog

All plans

A catalog of items you create and maintain yourself, inside Tail Sourcing.

Best for: Recurring items you already buy on known terms: MRO consumables, packaging, office and safety stock.

Benefits
  • Stops repeat buying by email — the item already exists with a price
  • One item code per thing, so spend finally aggregates by category
  • Requesters pick from a list instead of choosing a vendor
  • Your data, your prices, no supplier dependency

Supplier Global Catalog

Business & Enterprise

A catalog the supplier maintains and publishes, available to any buyer on the platform.

Best for: Discovering a new source for a category without opening a full RFQ.

Benefits
  • Find a second source in minutes instead of a two-week sourcing event
  • The supplier keeps items and availability current, not your team
  • Useful for low-value, urgent buys where an RFQ costs more than the item
  • New categories can be tested before you commit to a contract

Supplier/Client Catalog

Business & Enterprise

A supplier-managed catalog holding the prices you negotiated, visible only to your organization.

Best for: Everything you have a contract or agreed price list for.

Benefits
  • Negotiated prices become the default buying route — the main defence against maverick buying
  • Price changes come from the supplier, so your list never goes stale
  • Invoiced price can be matched against the agreed price every month
  • Savings you negotiated actually reach the P&L instead of evaporating

Punchout

Business & Enterprise

The buyer shops in the supplier's own e-commerce store and returns with a cart into your approval flow.

Best for: Large catalog suppliers with thousands of SKUs and constant changes.

Benefits
  • Full assortment and live pricing without importing a single item file
  • Configurable products behave correctly, because the supplier's own site handles them
  • The cart still passes budget check and approval routing before it becomes an order
  • No catalog maintenance work on either side
Side by side

Which catalog for which category

Catalog typeMaintained byVisible toPricesPlans
Hosted catalogYouYour organizationYoursAll plans
Supplier Global CatalogSupplierAny buyerPublic listBusiness & Enterprise
Supplier/Client CatalogSupplierYour organization onlyPre-negotiatedBusiness & Enterprise
PunchoutSupplier (own store)Your organizationLive supplier pricingBusiness & Enterprise

Catalogs are included from Startups & Small Business onward. Compare plans module by module.

A catalog only works if it is the fastest route

Catalog adoption fails when buying from the catalog is slower than buying off it. Two rules keep that from happening: catalog items get a low-friction approval path, and off-catalog purchases in a covered category require a reason. Both are fixed, inspectable rules in Tail Sourcing, not model decisions.

Catalog orders still pass a budget check before commitment and end in three-way match before payable — the same cycle as any other purchase.

Catalogs in the Purchases workspacePurchase order softwareBudget to payment

Frequently asked

A punchout catalog lets a buyer leave the procurement system, shop inside the supplier's own e-commerce store, and return with the cart into the buying flow. The requisition is then approved and turned into a purchase order like any other, so the supplier keeps the catalog current and the buyer keeps the controls.

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