How to Improve Spend Visibility: 8-Step Playbook for Finance and Procurement

Every CFO wants fewer surprises. Fewer “we didn’t know this was renewing tomorrow” emails. Fewer last-minute asks to approve spend that was never forecasted. Fewer contracts buried in someone's inbox or siloed in a shared drive no one’s checked since last quarter.

Establishing (and improving) spend visibility is often the antidote. At the very least, it’s the foundation to tracking and controlling dollars. 

But it’s more than that too. It’s about knowing what’s committed, what’s negotiable, and where there’s risk before it hits the budget. For companies scaling quickly, it’s also the difference between smart growth and costly inefficiency.

This playbook breaks down how procurement can lead the charge and partner with finance to surface hidden spend, centralize control, and bring discipline to the purchasing process with a realistic scenario. Just eight practical steps that drive clarity, control, and confidence across the business.

And it’s actually the same set of steps I’ve used when leading procurement teams in the past.

Meet Heather

For this guide, let’s walk through a practical scenario using Heather, the first procurement hire at a Series C tech company. 

Reporting to the CFO, her two main directives are:

1. Establish tighter spend controls as they prepare for an IPO
2. Help improve the company’s overall financial position

Up to this point, purchasing has been the Wild West - fragmented, undocumented, and mostly unmanaged. But Heather steps in with a vision for modern procurement, and she uses these eight steps below to dramatically increase visibility over spend and elevate the role of procurement in her organization.

Step 1: Conduct a Spend Analysis

Heather starts by partnering with her accounting team to download supplier spend from the ERP system. She works with Finance to enhance the data by layering in forecasted spend and payment methods (e.g. credit card vs. ACH), building a clear baseline of how much each department is spending across different categories and suppliers.

This initial analysis is more than a data exercise - it’s the start of transforming procurement from a cost center into a strategic advisor.

It’s also a moment to audit embedded liabilities and unknown renewals that could impact cash flow, budgeting, forecast accuracy, and compliance – which is exactly how she framed this to the CFO.

This is Heather’s first lens into financial exposure. This foundational activity signals the company’s transition from reactive purchasing to a more mature level of oversight.

The key deliverable is a normalized supplier list sorted by total spend. Heather cleans up the data, normalizing it to remove duplicates and prepare for the second step.

Step 2: Collect Contracts

With a line of sight into supplier spend, Heather now chases down contracts. The goal is simple: find them all, and store them in one centralized place.

But she’s finding that contracts all live in disparate places. She finds some on Google Drive, others live on employees' hard drives, a few are stored in a central SharePoint, and some are discovered in employee emails. And for any remaining, she’ll have to reach out to the supplier for a copy of it.

This step often reveals just how fragmented contract storage can be. Heather is finding that contracts all live in disparate places - Google Drive, desktops, SharePoint folders, email threads, slack conversations. Imagine how much shadow spend, missed renewals, and hidden costs lurk among these lost contracts.

Heather works through the sprawl and, where needed, requests copies from suppliers. While manual at first, modern procurement tools like Tropic can automate contract discovery and ingestion, helping teams move faster and reduce the risk of oversight.

Step 3: Centralize and Consolidate

Heather brings all contracts into a single source of truth. Whether it’s a contract management platform or an internal shared drive, the point is to create a searchable, accessible system - one that legal, finance, and procurement can all rely on.

Partnering with Legal, she implements a consistent naming convention (supplier name, year, department) and sets permissions for access and edit rights. This is what true governance looks like. It allows for contract lifecycle tracking, audit-readiness, and coordinated supplier management.

The shift from decentralized to centralized contract storage marks a critical evolution in procurement maturity and unlocks the next tier of spend control and forecasting accuracy.

Step 4: Extract and Track Metadata

With the contracts in hand, Heather turns her attention to the details. She extracts contract metadata because that will eventually turn into actionable insights. 

Important to note: which data you pull depends on what is important to your company. Regardless, the basic metadata you should collect and track are:

• Supplier
• Contract start date
• Contract end date
• Opt-out deadline
• Primary owner
• Department
• Contract value
• Average annual value
• Term length

Generally, the more metadata you have, the better your visibility. The caveat is this can take a lot of time and manual effort. Modern procurement software should automate this, but if you don’t yet have one, the next best thing would be an Excel or Google Sheet where you can share the information but control access and edit permissions.

This is exactly how Heather starts. She builds a shared Google Sheet to house the data while evaluating contract management tools that automate metadata extraction and integrate with ERP systems. The spreadsheet is her interim system of record - and a critical source of truth.

This tracking now empowers her to prevent auto-renewal surprises, manage obligations against budgets, and support FP&A in more accurate forecasting. For finance teams, this level of transparency can uncover tens of thousands in unnecessary renewal spend annually.

Heather also consults with stakeholders to track custom fields - like payment terms or legal clauses - tailoring the metadata to reflect what matters most to the business. This unlocks proactive supplier planning and deeper collaboration with Legal and InfoSec teams.

Step 5: Identify Contract Owners and Assess Criticality

With supplier and contract visibility in place, Heather moves to stakeholder alignment. This means identifying contract owners, including those who are accountable for the budget and those whom she will collaborate with as she works on sourcing and renewals.

Then, she takes some time to understand internal stakeholder sentiment to define supplier criticality (how important or needed this tool really is).

She sends out a short survey to assess supplier value and openness to change. By design, the survey should only take the stakeholder a minute or two to complete. She uses a 1-5 scale but also considers having stakeholders stack rank.

Here is the survey she sent out:

• ‍Question 1: You have been identified as the contract owner for SUPPLIER. Is this accurate?
  
  • Recommend a “Yes/No” radial option.
• ‍Question 2: Provide a brief ROI for this spend. What business results materialize as a result of spending money here?
  
  • Recommend a short paragraph.
• ‍Question 3: Please rate the business criticality of this particular spend (not supplier-specific).
  
  • Recommend a scale of 1 to 5. 1 is “Don’t Need,” and 5 is “Mission Critical - Impossible to Operate Without.” 
• ‍Question 4: How open are you to evaluating other competitive suppliers?
  
  • Recommend a scale of 1 to 5. 1 is “Very Opposed,” and 5 is “We Definitely Should."
• ‍Question 5: How would you rate the leverage we have with this supplier?
  
  • Recommend a scale of 1 to 5. 1 is “Very Weak,” and 5 is “Very Strong.” ‍
• Question 6: Anything else we should know?
  
  • Recommend a short paragraph.

The responses aren’t perfect as some stakeholders said that all of their suppliers are mission-critical (that’s inevitable), but this survey does help Heather identify low-hanging fruit. 

She creates a graph, using one axis to plot how open stakeholders are to considering alternatives and the other to show business criticality with the bubble size changing based on spend.

This becomes her playbook for sourcing strategy and risk mitigation. This process surfaces not only shelfware and duplicative tools, but also signals which suppliers warrant immediate attention. For CFOs, it becomes a fast-track to consolidation opportunities and better alignment between spend and business priorities.

Step 6: Collaborate with Stakeholders on Strategy

Heather now leverages the 80/20 rule, where she zeroes in on the 20% of suppliers driving 80% of the company’s spend. These are the big fish she can focus on to maximize impact without burning out trying to handle dozens or even hundreds of contracts.

Heather collects key data on these suppliers and does a quick landscape analysis. She also familiarizes herself with individual and department goals. She then meets with key stakeholders to share this data and build trust, nurture relationships, and strategize next steps.

These conversations are a great opportunity to show how her purchasing and procurement involvement can benefit stakeholders through improved supplier performance, optionality, and leverage. The goal is to walk away from these conversations knowing what is going well and what can be improved with each of the top suppliers and a clear understanding of next steps and responsibilities for her and her stakeholders.

Step 7: Engage Top Suppliers

It’s also important to nurture the relationships with your suppliers. Once Heather has narrowed down top suppliers and met with key stakeholders, she identifies the points of contact and sets up quick calls to introduce herself. She uses these calls to:

• Build a relationship
• Outline her goals and needs
• Get a high-level overview of the service the supplier is providing
• Review some objectives or metrics

She also doesn’t forget to express a desire to work together with the supplier. Establishing rapport will minimize future risk and make anything that does come up easier to work through.

They’ll be thankful for the opportunity to collaborate rather than just telling them they’re getting bid out.

Step 8: Review Budgeted Spend with FP&A

Lastly, Heather meets with FP&A to sync on upcoming planned spend (i.e. what month the spend will start). She reviews the financial plan to understand what new software or services are scheduled to start, and when. 

This is a forward-looking layer of visibility. It allows Heather to start sourcing discussions months ahead of spend commitment—ensuring the company isn’t locked into unfavorable terms or rushed purchases.

Heather now has a strong foundation of visibility that will allow her to improve control and leverage. 

• She has centralized all of this data
• She reviews it regularly and leverages it to initiate procurement requests
• She has a pipeline of activities and projects
• She’s in control

Her proactive and strategic approach not only gets results but earns her the trust internally and externally as a strategic partner to the business. 

The Result

Every step above compounds toward a more mature, more efficient, and more agile organization. 

Whether you're preparing for an IPO, navigating budget pressure, or driving toward operational excellence, visibility is your starting line.

Pat her on the back. Heather now has a living, centralized view of the company's supplier landscape. The company is no longer reacting to renewals but managing spend with intent, precision, and strategic influence.

• Finance has confidence in the data
• FP&A has visibility into obligations and upcoming spend
• Stakeholders feel empowered by options
• Suppliers respect Heather’s professionalism and preparation

She’s delivering savings, reducing risk, and elevating the procurement function. And in doing so, she’s helping the company scale toward IPO readiness with far greater control over their dollars.

Note that this playbook can be applied for companies at various levels - not just a series C tech company. Some steps may require some iteration based on the size of your organization, current state, and resources.