Procurement glossary

What this glossary is for

Procurement mixes legal, accounting and logistics vocabulary with plenty of jargon. This glossary gives a short, practical definition of each term as it is used day to day in a procurement team or accounts payable department in Morocco.

Definitions

Off-contract purchase

A purchase made with a supplier or at a price not covered by any negotiated contract. Its share is a key procurement maturity indicator. See the module →

Supplier approval

A formal decision authorising a supplier to work with the company, for a scope of categories, entities or amounts. See the module →

Spend analysis

Collecting, cleaning and classifying spend to know how much the company spends, with whom and on what. See the module →

Call for tenders

A formal competitive procedure in which several suppliers submit a bid under common rules. See the module →

Service entry (service confirmation)

Confirmation by the beneficiary that a service was performed as ordered; it is a condition for payment. See the module →

Amendment

A written change to an ongoing contract (amount, term, scope). See the module →

Credit note

A document issued by the supplier cancelling all or part of an invoice, for example after a price gap or a return. See the module →

Purchase order

A document committing the company to a supplier on items, quantities, prices and lead times. See the module →

Supplier catalog

A list of items and prices negotiated with a supplier, made available to requesters. See the module →

Spend category

A group of similar goods or services managed by a buyer under a common strategy. See the module →

Performance bond

A bank guarantee given by a contractor to secure proper execution, released after acceptance. See the module →

Blanket order

An order open over a period and an amount, drawn down by successive delivery calls. See the module →

Framework agreement

An agreement setting the terms (prices, lead times, service levels) for future orders over a period. See the module →

Landed cost

Purchase price plus freight, insurance, customs duties, forwarding and handling. See the module →

Progress statement

A summary of work or services completed under a contract, used as the basis for payment. See the module →

Purchase requisition

A formal statement of need by an employee, subject to approval before ordering. See the module →

E-procurement

Digitising procurement processes — requests, orders, receipts, invoices — on an online platform.

E-sourcing

Running supplier consultations online: file, invitations, bids, comparison and award. See the module →

Supplier evaluation

Periodic rating of a supplier against defined criteria (quality, lead time, service, safety). See the module →

Structured e-invoice

An invoice issued in a data format (for example XML) that systems can use directly, with no re-keying. See the module →

ICE (common company identifier)

A unique identifier assigned to every company in Morocco, used to identify it with public authorities. See the module →

Incoterm

An international rule allocating transport costs, risks and formalities between seller and buyer. See the module →

Procurement marketplace

An online storefront bringing together negotiated catalogs so employees can order themselves. See the module →

OCR

Optical character recognition: automatic reading of a PDF or scanned invoice. See the module →

OTIF (On Time In Full)

Share of deliveries arriving on the promised date and complete; the basic supplier performance indicator. See the module →

Supplier panel

The set of suppliers approved for a category. See the module →

Procure-to-Pay (P2P)

The operational part of procurement: from purchase request to supplier payment.

Annual procurement plan

The list of purchases planned for the year, built from departments’ needs; mandatory for public buyers. See the module →

Punch-out

A link from the procurement platform to a supplier’s website; the cart then returns to the platform for approval. See the module →

Three-way matching

A check comparing the order, the receipt and the invoice before payment. See the module →

Supplier master data

The company’s single supplier database, with legal, bank and contract information. See the module →

Year-end rebate

A discount granted by a supplier based on spend over a period, often by tiers. See the module →

Retention money

Part of a contract amount withheld from payments until the end of the warranty period. See the module →

RFI, RFQ, RFP

Request for information, request for quotation and request for proposal: three levels of supplier consultation. See the module →

Supplier risk

The likelihood of a supplier failing (financially, operationally or on compliance) and its impact on the company. See the module →

Source-to-Contract (S2C)

The strategic part of procurement: from needs and market analysis to contract signature.

Source-to-Pay (S2P)

The whole procurement cycle, from sourcing to payment, combining Source-to-Contract and Procure-to-Pay.

Safety stock

Quantity held to cover variations in consumption or delivery. See the module →

Matching tolerance

An accepted gap between the invoice and the order or receipt that does not block the invoice. See the module →

Approval workflow

The sequence of approvals required before a commitment, based on amount, category or entity. See the module →