Your superintendent buys materials before the PO is approved. Fix the system, not the super

The superintendent buys so the crew doesn't sit, the post said, and the work gets done. The damage shows up in the books. A purchase with no PO is not a commitment against the job, so the project manager sees it only when a receipt or invoice turns up. Workflow Automation Pro, which sets up approval systems for contractors, describes the same pattern: material picked up on account with no order number, budget checks that come after the money is spent, and approvals given by text that nobody can find later in a backcharge dispute.

Michael Loizias, co-founder of the UK procurement software company StoneRise, wrote that at a previous firm half the field ignored a written PO rule because a PO took forms, several signatures and up to 48 hours to clear. After the process was rebuilt so a PO could be raised from a phone in about two minutes, compliance rose from 50% to 98% in three months, he wrote. His approval tiers send small orders to automatic or team-lead approval within an hour and mid-size ones to the project manager within four hours.

Workflow Automation Pro's sample matrix lets a foreman release up to $500 at once against a job and cost code, and has the superintendent or PM clear $500 to $2,500 the same day with the cost code's remaining balance on screen. Emergencies get their own lane: the superintendent issues a provisional number with a photo of the problem, and the order is reviewed the next morning. Supply houses offer controls too. Home Depot's Pro Xtra program lets a company approve an employee's in-store purchase by text and see what was bought. StoneRise suggests tracking after-the-fact POs and keeping them under 5% of orders. A higher rate, it says, means the process is too slow.