Let them shop. Keep the record.
Shop on a supplier's own site at your contract prices, and the basket comes back as an order. For Amazon Business, Atlas also reads your account to show spend that never came through Atlas.
They shop where they already shop. You get the record.
Press the supplier's name and land on their site, signed in, at your contract prices. Fill a basket and transfer it back. Nothing is ordered until you confirm.
- WhyOtherwise it goes on a card. That costs more, loses the contract price, and leaves a receipt, not a record.
- InThe basket, line by line, with the supplier's part numbers
- OutA purchase order coded to a cost centre
- NeverAn order nobody here has confirmed
The ceiling is the control. The approval is not.
Small baskets go straight through. Signing for a box of pens teaches people to approve without reading. Larger baskets need one approver. Above your ceiling, the basket is refused and goes to a normal requisition.
- DirectUp to your direct limit: straight to the supplier
- One approverUp to the ceiling: the shopper's head of department decides. Price and supplier are already contracted.
- RefusedAbove the ceiling: no order. The refusal names both figures.
- Why it mattersWithout a ceiling, a no-approval limit controls nothing. People just fill more baskets.
What was bought without going through Atlas.
A separate connection, to Amazon Business today, reads your account there. It matches that against orders raised here. Anything unmatched never came through your process.
- ReadsYour transaction history from your own supplier account
- SendsNothing. It only reads.
- MatchingExact only: the supplier must echo our order number. No matching on amount or date, because a near-match hides unmatched spend.
- HonestRows without a transaction reference are skipped AND reported, never silently dropped
Four values from the supplier, two numbers from you.
The supplier gives two web addresses, an identity and a shared secret. You set a direct limit and a ceiling.
- SimpleEnter the four values and link a supplier record
- ThenSet both limits in your own currency
- ThenRecord a head of department for every team that shops. With none, the basket is refused.
- Safe by defaultTest mode is ON from the start. It stays on until you complete one full round trip.
A basket arrives cross-site. Here is how it is checked.
The basket comes from the shopper's browser, with no Atlas session. A random, single-use, time-limited identifier proves it is genuine. Atlas issued it when the trip began.
- RefusedIdentifiers that are reused, expired, unknown or missing
- ValidatedBoth supplier addresses must be public HTTPS before the shared secret is sent
- StoredThe shared secret is encrypted and never shown on screen
- SentThe shopper's name and work email, so the supplier can apply your pricing. The privacy policy says so.