What Is Maverick Spending in Procurement?
Last reviewed: November 2026
Maverick spending is any purchase made outside an organization's agreed procurement process, such as buying from a non-approved supplier, skipping a purchase order or ignoring an existing contract. It reduces spend visibility because those purchases bypass the systems procurement and finance rely on, so the spending only becomes visible when an invoice arrives, if it is identified at all.
Maverick spending is also called rogue spend or off-contract spend. It is rarely deliberate. In most organizations it happens because the approved way to buy is slower, harder to find or less clear than simply ordering from a familiar supplier.
What causes maverick spending?
Most maverick spending comes from a handful of common causes. Understanding which ones apply is the first step to fixing them.
Fragmented and decentralized purchasing
When purchasing happens across many departments, sites or campuses without a shared system, each area develops its own way of buying. Staff use the suppliers they know, by email, phone, card or a supplier's website, and procurement loses a consistent view of what is being bought and from whom. Decentralized buying is often the right model, but it needs a common process behind it. Our article on turning decentralized procurement into a strategic advantage looks at how organizations get that balance right.
Unclear policy
If staff don't know which suppliers are approved, which purchases need a purchase order or what the thresholds are, they make their own judgment. Policies that are long, hard to find or written for procurement specialists tend to be ignored by the people who buy only occasionally.
Slow approvals
When approvals take days and the need is urgent, people find a faster route. Every workaround that succeeds becomes the habit for next time.
Poor catalog access
Negotiated contracts only deliver value if people can find and use them. If contracted products aren't easy to search, or the catalog doesn't cover what staff actually buy, they will go elsewhere.
How does maverick spending reduce spend visibility?
Spend visibility depends on purchases flowing through systems that record what was bought, from which supplier, by whom and against which budget. Maverick purchases bypass those systems, which affects visibility in four ways.
- Spend is seen too late. Without a purchase order, finance learns about the purchase when the invoice arrives. The money is already committed and budgets can't be managed in advance.
- Data is incomplete. Invoices coded to broad ledger accounts don't show the category, product or supplier detail needed to understand spend patterns.
- Suppliers multiply. The same supplier may be set up several times, and new suppliers appear without checks, making it hard to see total spend with any one supplier.
- Reporting can't be trusted. When a share of spend sits outside the system, reports understate what is really being spent and where.
What else does maverick spending affect?
Contract compliance
Every off-contract purchase weakens the agreements procurement has negotiated. Suppliers on a contract may have been promised volume that never arrives, which reduces your leverage at the next negotiation.
Negotiated savings
Savings from a sourcing exercise are only realized when people buy at the negotiated price. Maverick purchases often happen at higher, non-contracted prices, so the savings reported on paper don't show up in the budget.
Audit readiness
Auditors expect to see who requested a purchase, who approved it and why a supplier was chosen. Purchases made outside the process leave gaps in that trail, which is a particular concern for public sector organizations that need to demonstrate transparency and compliance with procurement rules.
Supplier risk
Suppliers engaged outside the process may not have been checked for insurance, licenses or other requirements. That exposes the organization to risks it doesn't know it has taken on.
What does maverick spending look like in practice?
The patterns are similar across sectors, but the details differ. These are common scenarios rather than specific cases.
- Higher education. A research group orders lab consumables directly from a supplier's website on a card, even though the university has a contracted supplier for the same products. The purchase is coded to a general account and isn't linked to the grant until reconciliation.
- Government. A city public works department hires a local contractor for urgent repairs by phone, without a purchase order or a check against existing contracts. The invoice arrives weeks later with no approval on record.
- Mid-market organizations. Different teams each buy software subscriptions on corporate cards. Finance discovers several overlapping tools, each with its own renewal date, and no single view of the total cost.