Purchasing is where money leaks: in the gaps between email, WhatsApp, Excel and your ERP. Riwyre joins procurement and finance into one controlled process, puts an audit check at every step, and automates the handoffs so nothing waits in nobody's lap.
Your ERP says Pending. The real purchase is somewhere else.
One purchase lives in four places. Your system of record only sees the last one, so the controls your auditors rely on are checking a decision that was already made.
Place 1
Email
The request, the quotes and the "approved" reply, forwarded back and forth.
Place 2
WhatsApp
"Sir, the purchase is urgent. Please approve it today."
Place 3
Excel
A budget sheet exported, emailed to finance, and typed back in by hand.
Place 4
Your ERP
Entered at the very end, approved again for the record.
Procurement thinks the job ends at the purchase order. Finance thinks it starts at the invoice.
The money leaks in between.
Where money leaks
Eight leaks in the purchase process, and the control that closes each one
The leakWhat it looks likeThe control we put in
Split purchases
One large purchase broken into small ones to stay under an approval limit.
Split detection across requester, vendor and dates, with the full amount sent to the right approver.
Fake or duplicate vendors
A vendor that exists only on paper, or the same vendor set up twice.
Tax registration and bank account checked before any vendor is created, plus a duplicate check.
Duplicate or inflated invoices
The same invoice paid twice, or billed above the agreed price.
Three-way match: purchase order, goods received and invoice must agree before payment.
Kickbacks and conflicts
A vendor chosen because of who they know, not what they offer.
Quote rules by value, approved vendor lists, conflict declarations, and a requester who can never approve their own purchase.
Approvals with no trail
Approved on WhatsApp, approved again in the system later.
One approval, recorded once: who approved, when, on which channel and based on what.
Budget checked too late
Money is committed before finance even knows the purchase exists.
Budget reserved the moment the request is raised, before quotes are collected.
Paying for what never arrived
Payment released without proof of delivery.
Goods received confirmed by someone other than the buyer, before the invoice can be paid.
Changed bank details
A vendor's bank account quietly changed before a payment run.
Any bank change verified independently and approved by two people.
Controls proportionate to risk
A box of pens shouldn't need the same approvals as a new server room.
When every purchase gets the same heavy checks, people route around them, and the risky purchases hide in the queue with the trivial ones. We set controls by value, vendor and category, so effort goes where the risk is.
Low risk
Routine, low value, known vendor
Auto-approved under a policy you set
Budget checked automatically
Monthly sample review by finance
Medium risk
Above threshold or a new item
Quotes required by value
One accountable approver
Three-way match before payment
High risk
High value, new vendor, sensitive category
Competitive quotes or tender
Two approvals and vendor verification
Conflict declarations and post-payment review
Lighter where it's safe, tighter where it matters. The thresholds come from your risk, not from a template.
Procure to pay, with audit built in
One purchase, nine steps, a control at every one
Procurement and finance run as one process. Each step leaves a record your auditors can read without asking anyone for a file. How deep each check goes depends on the risk of the purchase.
01
Request
Department raises the need
Control
Budget available and reserved. The requester can't approve their own request.
02
Quotes
Procurement sources vendors
Control
Number of quotes set by purchase value, approved vendor list, conflict of interest declared.
03
Vendor setup
Only if the vendor is new
Control
Tax registration and bank account verified. Duplicate vendor check.
04
Approval
Right approver, right limit
Control
Approval limits by amount, split purchase detection, segregation of duties.
05
Purchase order
Issued to the vendor
Control
Order matches the approved quote and the budget line it was reserved against.
06
Goods received
Store or user confirms delivery
Control
Confirmed by someone other than the buyer, with quantity and quality checked.
Dual signatories, verified bank details, approved payment run.
09
Report
Management and audit
Control
Budget, committed and spent, live by cost centre. A full audit trail for every purchase.
The budget angle
A budget check after approval isn't a control. It's paperwork.
In most organisations, finance sees a purchase after it's been agreed. By then the budget check can only record the decision, not stop it.
Example budget line: IT equipmentLive
SpentCommitted, not yet invoicedAvailable
New requestChecked against available, not total
Over budgetNeeds approval before, not after
Mid-year changeApproved and recorded in the flow
The amount is reserved against its budget line the moment a request is raised.
Finance sees budget, committed and spent, live, by cost centre.
Going over budget needs a decision before the purchase, never a justification after it.
Mid-year reallocations are approved inside the process, not agreed on email and forgotten.
No more exporting purchase lines to Excel, emailing finance and typing them back in.
Why it doesn't get fixed from inside
Everyone knows the process is broken. Here's why nobody fixes it.
It isn't laziness. These are smart, capable people. The process is built so that nobody inside it can see it whole, or has the authority to change it.
1
Nobody owns the whole journey
Procurement owns its steps, finance owns its steps. The delay lives in the handoffs between them, and the handoffs belong to nobody.
2
The workaround works
When something is urgent, someone sends a WhatsApp and it gets done. A process that never visibly fails never gets fixed.
3
Controls get added, never removed
Every audit observation adds a signature. Removing one feels risky, and nobody inside has the authority to do it.
4
The process moved on. The system stood still.
The ERP was set up years ago to copy the paper process of that time. Changing it needs IT time, vendor cost and approvals, so email and WhatsApp fill the gap.
5
Paper protects people
"I have it in writing."
Approving on paper and then again in the system feels like double protection. Where people fear blame, duplication feels safe.
It takes someone outside the departments, with a mandate from the top, to see the whole journey and remove what no longer protects anything.
Who we work with
Organisations where a purchase crosses many desks, systems and locations
We work with companies running complex, integrated systems across many sites, with scattered teams, where work gets routed between departments before anyone can act on it.
Banks
Branches, head office, many approvers
Branch requests travel through regional and central teams, with strict audit and regulatory expectations at every step.
Manufacturing
Plants, warehouses, spares
Urgent purchases for production, many vendors, and goods received at sites far from the finance team.
Education
Campuses, departments, grants
Universities and institutes with departmental budgets, committee approvals and funded projects with their own rules.
Distributed teams
Many locations, one process
Groups with scattered offices where requests move on email and WhatsApp between people who never sit together.
What we do
From a full procure-to-pay rebuild to Claude inside one Excel sheet.
Start here · 2 to 3 weeks · fixed fee
Procurement and Finance Review
We follow real purchases from request to payment, across email, WhatsApp, paper and your ERP, and test every control against your own policy.
A map of how purchases really move, step by step
Every handoff, wait and approval, with who owns it
Control gaps: missing, overridden or done after the fact
A scan of your purchase data for split purchases, duplicate vendors and duplicate invoices
A clear plan for what to fix and automate first
Core solution
Procure-to-pay automation
Requests captured wherever they arrive, budget reserved, routed to the right approver, chased, matched and recorded in your ERP.
Audit ready
Controls that run themselves
Approval limits, segregation of duties, three-way match and a full audit trail, enforced on every purchase.
Quick wins
AI inside the tools you already use
Small, fast fixes that save hours every week, without a new system.
Claude in your purchase registerInvoice readingDuplicate and split checks"Where is my request?" on WhatsApp
Monthly
Run and improve
We keep the process and its controls running, watch where purchases still wait, and fix the next bottleneck.
Everything is automated except the decision. Your people only approve.
How it works
Map. Prune. Rewire. Run.
Map
Follow real purchases end to end and test every control against your policy.
Prune
Remove steps that protect nothing: duplicate approvals, extra copies, re-keying into Excel.
Rewire
Put each control at the right step and automate the handoffs between procurement and finance.
Run
Every purchase tracked live, with budget, approvals and payment in one audit trail.
Keep your systems
We work around your ERP, email and WhatsApp. No rip and replace.
Keep your people's habits
Nobody has to learn a new portal to raise a purchase request.
Keep the decision human
Approvals stay with accountable people. Everything around them runs on its own.
Pay for outcomes, not hours
A fixed-fee review first, then a monthly fee per process. No timesheets.
Usman, Founder
Who's behind Riwyre
Hi, I'm Usman.
I've spent more than 20 years in operations and technology, running distributed delivery teams for companies ranging from startups to global consumer brands. I've designed operational systems by sitting with the people who run them every day.
In almost every organisation I've worked with, I've seen the same thing: good, smart people, expensive systems, and work that still moves on email and WhatsApp. Riwyre exists to fix the part that no one can fix while sitting inside the company.
No. Riwyre works around the systems you already have. Purchase requests keep arriving on email, WhatsApp or forms; we track and control the steps in between and record the result in your ERP.
Which systems do you work with?
We plan around Microsoft Dynamics, Odoo, SAP Business One, Excel and Google Sheets, Outlook, Gmail and WhatsApp Business. Older or custom systems are checked case by case during the review.
What do we get from the procurement and finance review?
A map of how purchases really move from request to payment, every place they wait, the control gaps against your own policy, a scan of your purchase data for red flags, and a plan for what to fix first. It takes 2 to 3 weeks and has a fixed fee.
Will this help with our auditors?
Yes. Every purchase leaves one trail: who requested, who approved, against which budget, what was received and what was paid. Internal and external auditors can see it without chasing files and emails.
Won't more controls slow purchases down?
Not when they're proportionate. Low-risk purchases get lighter, automated checks, so they move faster than today. The heavier controls are kept for high-value purchases, new vendors and sensitive categories.
Will approvals be automated too?
The decision stays with your people. Everything around it is automated: capturing the request, reserving budget, routing, chasing late approvers, matching invoices and recording the outcome. Low-value purchases can be auto-approved under a policy you set.
Is our data safe?
We only use the access you approve, keep a full audit trail of every automated step, and can discuss private deployment where your data must stay in your environment.
Find out where your purchases leak.
Book a 30-minute call. Bring one purchase that took too long or didn't feel right, and we'll show you where it waited and which control was missing.