How to Configure Guided Buying Policies

Guided Buying makes it easier to manage employee spending and compliance by steering them to the right products or suppliers and identifying product categories that employees shouldn’t purchase. It takes the mystery out of shopping for work by providing your buyers clear answers to the question: What am I allowed to buy? Buying policies turn procurement rules into easy-to-follow visual signposts for buyers, boosting compliance and reducing the time spent answering employee questions to enable smart business buying.

Getting started with Guided Buying is simple: navigate to Business Settings, scroll down to the Buying Policies section, and select Buying policies & approvals. Click the Add policy button to begin. Administrators can decide to apply a policy to a certain group or subgroup, as well as an optional message for buyers to see when browsing products. In the video above, we dive into common scenarios that organizations set policies for.

Certain Guided Buying policies are exclusive to organizations with a Business Prime membership. These policies are marked with a (*) below

Seller policies

• Prefer local sellers: Make products from local sellers easier to find
• *Prefer sellers: Make product offers from favorite sellers easier to find
• Prefer small and diverse sellers: Mark all sellers with a small business or diversity certification as preferred
• Restrict debarred sellers: Warn employees from buying items sold by debarred sellers
• Block debarred sellers: Block employees from buying items sold by debarred sellers

Order policies

• Business order information: Flag orders with the option to add approvals for business order info fields during checkout
• Spending limits for orders: Require approval of flag orders over set spending threshold
• *Spending limits for product categories: Require approval or flag products over a set spending threshold for specific categories

Product policies

• *Prefer brands: Choose the brands that will show first in buyers’ search results
• *Prefer list: Preferred Lists are shared with your organization. The items are shown first in search results and help guide your organization’s spending
• *Prefer products with sustainability certifications: Encourage buyers in your organization to purchase more sustainable products
• *Restrict categories: Flag the product categories you want employees to avoid
• *Restrict non-Prime products: Flag products that don’t offer Prime benefits so buyers can avoid them
• *Restrict used & renewed products: Flag used products you want employees to avoid
• Block adult products: Hide products that contain adult content and block them from being purchased