Field notes
Reading maverick spend in Vietnamese purchase ledgers
How off-catalogue purchases hide inside familiar account codes, and what a first pass of invoice lines usually reveals.
Maverick spend rarely announces itself with a separate ledger. In many Vietnamese companies it sits inside the same expense accounts used for catalogue buys — office supplies, maintenance, or logistics — booked by people who needed something quickly and bypassed the preferred supplier.
A practical first pass starts with supplier concentration by category. When a category shows twenty or more one-off vendors beneath a dominant supplier, those thin tails deserve a second look. Match invoice descriptions against the approved catalogue wording; loose phrases such as “miscellaneous materials” often mark purchases that never entered the preferred channel.
Timing also matters. Clusters of small invoices just under approval thresholds can be more telling than a single large outlier. Pull a ninety-day window and sort by requester or cost centre rather than by supplier alone. The pattern that emerges is usually organisational, not accidental.
Once the tail is visible, the conversation with category owners can stay concrete: which of these one-off buys could have used the preferred contract, and which reflect a genuine gap in that contract’s coverage. That distinction keeps the review useful instead of punitive.