Indirect procurement in NetSuite: how to get suppliers without punchout onto a purchase order

Punchout works well for suppliers that offer a cXML catalog, and those tend to be the big, frequent ones. Retailers like Walmart, Costco and Lowe’s don’t offer punchout, so purchases from them usually go on a company card or an expense report and get coded after the fact. A lot of indirect procurement ends up in that second bucket.

We built Cart Capture for those suppliers. Before getting to how it works, it helps to look at where indirect spend slips past the PO process and where punchout fits.

What is indirect procurement, and why is it hard to control in NetSuite?

Indirect procurement is buying the goods and services that keep the business running but don't end up in what you sell. Think break room and office supplies, lab consumables, tools and replacement parts, IT accessories, and facilities and maintenance items.

Indirect buying is spread out. Many people place small orders with lots of suppliers, which makes it easy for purchases to go around the PO process. The usual exits:

• Company cards. Fast for the buyer, and the coding happens later, by someone who didn't make the purchase.

• Expense reports. The employee pays, gets reimbursed, and the receipt shows up when it shows up.

• After-the-fact POs. The invoice arrives first, and someone creates a PO to match it. The approval is on record, but it came after the spend.

The research matches what shows up at month-end:

• A 2025 Efficio survey of CPOs and CFOs found only 19% have full visibility of indirect spend, and 85% say more than a quarter of that spend has no financial oversight.

• In the Amazon Business 2024 State of Procurement report, only 46% of decision-makers completely agreed that employees outside procurement follow their policies and procedures.

• Ardent Partners research on CPO Rising notes that every dollar of noncompliant or "maverick" spend can carry an additional cost of 12 to 18%.

Where does indirect spend sit in the NetSuite procure to pay flow?

A typical NetSuite procure to pay flow looks like this:

• Someone requests the item (some teams use requisitions, some go straight to the PO).

• A purchase order is created with the supplier, items, pricing and coding.

• The PO goes through approval.

• The goods are received.

• The vendor bill is entered and matched to the PO.

• The bill is paid.

Each step leaves a record. An off-PO purchase skips the first four steps in the flow and lands at the end as a card transaction, an expense line, or a bill with nothing to match against. You lose the approval before the spend, and the coding comes from someone who wasn't there for the purchase. When the auditor asks for support, you have to rebuild the story from a receipt.

People skip the PO partly because creating one takes effort. APQC benchmarks put the average cost to process a purchase order at $42, with the 25th percentile around $14 and the 75th percentile at $54.50. When a PO feels like more work than the order is worth, a $40 purchase goes on the card. So the practical fix is making the PO easier to create.

When does punchout cover indirect spend, and when do you need Cart Capture?

Punchout is the standard answer for suppliers that support it. The buyer starts in NetSuite, shops the supplier's catalog, and the cart comes back to NetSuite as a PO. Netgain's PunchOut handles that for suppliers with cXML punchout catalogs.

There is a gap for suppliers without a cXML punchout catalog. Retailers like Walmart, Costco or Lowe's don't offer punchout connectivity to NetSuite. Cart Capture, Netgain's Chrome extension that works alongside PunchOut, is built for that group.

If your teams buy from both kinds of suppliers, you'll likely use both: PunchOut where the supplier supports it, and Cart Capture for the rest.

How does Cart Capture turn a supplier's cart into a NetSuite purchase order?

Here's the flow from the buyer's side:

• An admin gives the buyer access. Cart Capture access is assigned to specific NetSuite users, so not everyone in the company can sign in and buy whatever they want.

• The buyer signs in to NetSuite from the extension in Chrome.

• The buyer shops the supplier's site as usual. When the cart is ready, they click "capture cart," then "send to NetSuite."

• NetSuite opens the return cart screen. The supplier's part numbers and pricing are already filled in. The buyer codes the lines (location, department and item mapping) before the PO is created.

• The PO goes through your existing NetSuite approval workflow.

• After approval, the buyer goes back to the supplier tab and places the order. The tab stays open, so the cart is still there.

Cart Capture creates the purchase order in NetSuite, and the buyer places the order with the supplier.

There's no automatic PO transmission like there is with punchout, since the supplier has no punchout session to receive it. Payment happens with the supplier as usual.

In exchange for that extra step, you get an approved PO in NetSuite before the money moves, coded by the person who made the purchase. For teams that would otherwise put these purchases on a company card, month-end review starts from a record instead of a receipt.

What should you set up before you roll out Cart Capture?

The NetSuite side installs as a SuiteApp, and the extension installs from the Chrome Web Store. Before you roll it out, work through these five steps:

• Decide who gets access. Start with the people who buy from non-punchout suppliers most often, such as office managers or lab and facilities leads.

• Pick your item mapping approach. Cart Capture gives you three options:

• Create and match items, so supplier items are set up as NetSuite items.

• Use one global default item for captured lines.

• Let the buyer pick the item from a dropdown on the return cart screen.

A default item keeps things simple at the start. Create and match gives you item-level detail in NetSuite.

• Check your PO approval workflow. Make sure the thresholds and approvers make sense for small, frequent orders, or approvers will be buried in $30 requests.

• Set coding expectations. Tell buyers what they need to enter for location and department on the return cart screen, and what to do when they aren't sure.

• Agree on how the order gets placed and paid. Buyers need to know to wait for approval, return to the supplier tab and check out. Decide how they'll pay and how that charge gets matched to the PO, so you don't end up with open POs at month-end.

Which indirect procurement best practices keep the long tail under control?

Tools help, but the policy around them does most of the work. These habits make indirect spend management easier:

• Write down which purchases need a PO. Use a dollar threshold, a list of categories, or both. If buyers have to guess, they'll guess the card.

• Match the buying method to the supplier. Use punchout where the supplier offers it, Cart Capture for websites that don't, and the card for truly incidental purchases.

• Make the compliant path the easy one. If creating a PO takes longer than checking out, people will check out.

• Review off-PO spend by vendor every month. A vendor that shows up on the card feed month after month is a candidate to move onto a PO.

• Clean up open POs before close. Close out approved POs that were never ordered or never billed so they don't sit on the books.

Where can you see Cart Capture in action?

Cart Capture is now available. The interactive demo walks through how it works, step by step.

See Cart Capture in Action  >

If you'd also like to see how punchout purchasing works for your cXML suppliers, the PunchOut interactive tour covers that side.

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