How Q-Card Helps Reduce Maverick Spend

Why So Many Companies Lose Control Over Their Expenditures

At Q-Card, we engage monthly with a wide range of organizations, from rapidly scaling scale-ups to established corporations. One recurring challenge stands out: a significant share of spending occurs outside the agreed procurement process.

These uncontrolled purchases are known as maverick spend. In this blog, we explain:

• How maverick spend arises
• Why it drains your organization’s time and money
• And how Q-Card empowers you to take back control

How Does Maverick Spend Occur?

Procurement teams invest substantial time in contracts with preferred suppliers and establishing purchasing channels. Still, employees regularly bypass these channels.

Why?

• The process lacks user-friendliness
• There’s limited visibility into current expenditures
• Employees are often unaware of the policy
• And there’s insufficient control upfront

The outcome: products are purchased at inflated prices, acquisitions don’t meet safety standards or policies, and valuable agreements with vendors are circumvented.

What 's the issue? 

Maverick spend takes many forms, such as:

• Standalone invoices
• Credit card payments
• Reimbursement claims without prior approval

Sometimes, a manager gives authorization without insight into existing contracts. More often, it’s simply: “Just put the invoice in the company’s name.”

Finance is then left to figure out who bought what, why, and for which purpose. It’s a time-consuming and error-prone process—especially without a centralized platform for tracking communications and audit trails, which instead happens via email and phone.

Another issue: vendors are often paid late, resulting in frustration, strained relationships, and potential financial consequences, such as penalties or additional late payment charges.

How Can You Reduce Maverick Spend?

The solution starts with control. You can only achieve this with a well-designed, digital process. This enables you to:

• Gain real-time insights into requests and costs
• Adjust in time where needed
• Maintain control without administrative burden

As with any digitization initiative, broad support is essential. Success hinges on involving all stakeholders. Highlighting the benefits for each role is key:

For Budget Holders:

• Complete overview of expenditures within their responsibility
• Ability to intervene promptly

For Employees:

• Simple request process
• No more advancing costs
• Swift clarity on approvals

For Finance or Shared Service Centers:

• Immediate access to complete and accurate data with each request (such as general ledger, cost center, project code, reason)
• Fewer manual corrections
• Faster invoice processing
• Shorter throughput and month-end closing times
• Improved supplier management thanks to timely payments

How Q-Card Helps? 

Q-Card is an intuitive app for desktop and mobile that enables employees to swiftly submit purchase requests.

Requests are automatically routed to the appropriate budget holder for approval, keeping the process controlled and accessible.

Q-Card supports procurement compliance by:

• Basing the approval matrix on existing procurement policies
• Allowing the procurement department and budget holders to exert influence upfront, before a purchase is actually made
• Eliminating the need for employees to advance costs, making the process attractive to follow and simple to use
• Enabling even small, fragmented expenditures (tail spend) to be properly recorded and easily tracked in a BI dashboard

Each request requires the correct details upfront:

• General ledger
• Cost center
• Project code
• Reason for the expenditure
• Other relevant information

This information is automatically forwarded to the ERP and/or accounting system, eliminating errors and manual work after the fact.

The greatest advantage? You gain insight not only into actual expenditures, but also into planned purchases. This provides visibility into:

• Where costs are expected
• Which departments or projects they’re tied to
• And whether they comply with policy

As a result, you can intervene proactively, encourage preferred suppliers, and systematically reduce maverick spend.

More Control, Less Admin

Want to learn how Q-Card could benefit your organization?

Book a free demo
to discover how you can:

✅ Easily control all spending
✅ Speed up internal processes
✅ Support employees without sacrificing flexibility

👉 Neem contact met ons op of vraag direct een demo aan via https://www.qcardapp.com/en/demo