A procurement time audit measures the work around a real order: checking stock, preparing the PO, handling the supplier reply, receiving and preparing the finance handoff. Start with your own times rather than a claim about how many hours every small business should save.
Track a complete cycle
Pick representative suppliers and record active work as it happens. Keep waiting time separate: a supplier taking two days to confirm does not mean a buyer worked on the order for forty-eight hours.
Use one row per work session:
| Field | Example |
|---|---|
| Order and supplier | PO 1042, Supplier A |
| Activity | Review partial-fill proposal |
| Person | Buyer |
| Active minutes | 6 |
| Volume | 8 order lines |
| Outcome | Accepted six cases now; two still pending |
| Rework | Corrected a case-to-unit mismatch |
Also log shared tasks, such as a stock count serving several suppliers, once. Multiplying the same stocktake by every supplier inflates the baseline.
Separate decisions from duplicate entry
Some work protects the business: checking condition at receipt, approving a substitute, confirming spend authority and reviewing an invoice. Other work repeats an existing fact: copying a supplier's ETA into a spreadsheet or entering the same quantity into three tools.