Maverick Spending (2026): What It Is, Why It Happens and How to Measure and Reduce It

TL;DR

Maverick spending is any purchase that bypasses an approved supplier, a negotiated contract or the required buying process, whatever its value. It usually persists because the approved route is slow or because employees cannot find the right supplier or terms, not because of fraud. You measure it as off-policy spend divided by total spend, and you reduce it by making the approved route the easiest one. This guide is published by Sentra, which understands how a company really runs, and acts on it before anyone asks. The decision to go off-policy is usually made in an email, a chat or a meeting before any purchase order exists, and Sentra connects those conversations with purchasing data to flag it to the budget owner while there is still time to redirect it.

What maverick spending is

The Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (CIPS) defines maverick spend, also called off-contract spend, as cases where local staff ignore existing contractual arrangements and purchase from other suppliers. Most organizations use a broader working definition: any purchase that bypasses procurement rules, approved suppliers or negotiated contracts. A buyer might hire an unapproved vendor or skip a required purchase order. An approved supplier can also be part of maverick spend if the buyer ignores the contract price or the approval process.

Tail spend is a different pattern. It is the long list of low-value purchases spread across many suppliers, and those purchases can follow every rule. A small purchase from an approved catalog is tail spend without being maverick spend. A large purchase at the wrong contract rate is maverick spend without being tail spend. Check which problem you have before choosing a fix.

The types of maverick spending

A supplier list alone cannot reveal off-contract pricing, because the vendor and the purchase may both be approved. You have to compare the transaction with the agreed terms, which is the same check described in our guide to contract compliance. Software bought on expense cards outside IT is a growing share of the first two types, and our guide to shadow AI covers that case.

Why maverick spending happens

A slow purchasing process gives people a reason to buy outside it. If a small purchase needs the same manual approvals as a major contract, an employee facing a deadline may ask a supplier to start work before procurement signs off. Convenience and urgency, rather than fraud, are the usual motives.

An approved route is also harder to use when employees cannot search a catalog or submit a request easily, so they order from a supplier they already know. Culture reinforces the workaround when managers accept it or treat small purchases as too minor to review.

Information failures are the third cause. An employee may not know which supplier has a contract, what the agreed price covers or whom to ask for approval. They ask those questions in email, chat or meetings before anyone creates a purchase order. An ERP records the purchase once it is entered, but spend data cannot show why the employee chose the off-policy route before that point.

How to measure it: maverick spend rate and spend under management

Maverick spend rate (%)  = off-policy spend / total spend x 100
Compliance rate (%)      = in-policy spend / total spend x 100   (same purchases and rules)
Spend under management (%) = spend overseen by procurement / total addressable spend x 100

Example: $750,000 off-policy / $5,000,000 total = 15% maverick spend rate, 85% compliance rate

Apply the same policy tests to purchase orders, invoices, card transactions and expense reports so the calculation includes purchases made without a PO. Reconcile overlapping records first. An invoice and its purchase order are one purchase, not two.

Spend under management is not automatically the inverse of the maverick rate. Procurement can manage a purchase that still breaks contract terms, and you must define which categories count as addressable before comparing periods or business units. Compliance rate is the inverse of the maverick rate only when both use the same purchases and the same rules.

Published benchmarks vary with how each study defines spend and compliance, so treat your own trend as the benchmark that matters. The direction of the evidence is consistent, though. In its July 2026 AI World Class procurement benchmarks, The Hackett Group reported that guided buying and catalog adoption improved by 110% among the organizations it classes as AI World Class, reducing maverick spend leakage by 69%.

How to reduce maverick spending

• Make the approved route the fastest one. Give buyers a searchable catalog of approved suppliers with contracted prices and terms visible before they submit a request, and keep the policy next to it so they can see when a PO is needed and who can approve an exception.
• Match approvals to the purchase. Auto-approve routine purchases below a threshold when supplier, category and price match policy. Route higher-value requests and exceptions to the budget owner before anyone commits to the supplier.
• Check related requests together. Group requests by requester, vendor and date so splitting a purchase does not avoid review.
• Combine every spend source. Match PO, invoice, card and expense data against supplier lists, contracts and approvals. Send budget owners each exception with the transaction, the policy and the reason it was flagged.
• Fix the pattern, not only the transaction. If several departments buy the same service from different vendors, consolidate under one contract. Review off-policy purchases by business unit each month and update catalogs, thresholds or supplier coverage when the same exception keeps appearing.

Some maverick spend is also a control problem. If one person can choose a supplier, set it up and approve its invoices, the purchase may be off-policy and unreviewed at once. Our guide to segregation of duties covers how to separate those steps.

Where the decision to go off-policy happens

A purchase order can reveal an off-policy purchase, but the decision usually happened earlier. Someone agreed to use an unapproved vendor in an email thread, got a verbal yes in a meeting or confirmed the order in chat. The ERP or AP record appears only after the commitment. By then, the budget owner can approve or reject an exception but can no longer redirect the purchase to the contracted supplier.

Where Sentra fits

Sentra understands how a company really runs, and acts on it before anyone asks. It reads email, chat, meetings and documents alongside ERP, CRM, HRIS and BI data, and works out what is true now and why. When a conversation names a supplier or a price that falls outside approved terms, Sentra compares it with purchasing records and policy and raises the planned commitment to the budget owner before a purchase order exists.

A named person approves anything Sentra raises before it reaches anyone else. Every claim cites its source, and permissions follow the source. Sentra replaces none of the company's systems. The procurement suite and the ERP remain the place where purchases are approved and recorded.

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