What Is PunchOut? Smarter Procurement for Business Central

For consumers, buying something online is usually easy. You search, compare options, add what you need to a cart, and check out.

Business purchasing often adds a few more steps.

That expectation for a more digital buying experience is increasingly showing up in B2B commerce, too. 78% of 500 B2B leaders surveyed said their customers were demanding a more digitized sales process, according to Deloitte research. The same analysis identifies integrated procurement commerce – including PunchOut connections to a seller’s website – as one way companies are responding to those expectations.

For organizations using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, ReQlogic adds PunchOut as part of a broader procurement process designed to provide greater structure, control, and visibility from the initial request through purchasing, receiving, and invoice matching.

What is PunchOut Procurement?

PunchOut is a standard way for a procurement application to connect with a supplier’s ecommerce catalog.

The technology commonly uses cXML, or commerce eXtensible Markup Language, an open standard that has been used for business-to-business purchasing since the late 1990s. ReQlogic has supported PunchOut functionality since 2003.

Instead of recreating a supplier’s catalog inside the procurement system, a user can access the supplier-hosted shopping experience. The supplier remains responsible for maintaining its products, catalog information, and applicable pricing.

A typical PunchOut process looks like this:

• The employee begins a requisition through the procurement system.
• The employee opens a supported supplier’s PunchOut catalog.
• They search for products and add the items they need to the supplier cart.
• Rather than completing the purchase directly with the supplier, they return the cart to the procurement application.
• The selected products populate the requisition.
• The requisition moves through the organization’s normal approval workflow.
• Once approved, the process can continue toward purchase order creation.

In other words: leave, shop, return, approve.

PunchOut is not simply another way to shop online. It connects shopping to a structured purchasing process so employees get a familiar buying experience while procurement retains its controls.

Why is Manual Supplier Shopping a Problem?

Without PunchOut, supplier purchasing can involve more manual work than it appears to at first.

Consider an employee who needs several pieces of equipment or routine supplies. They visit the organization’s preferred supplier, find the correct products, and see the current item information. But if that supplier site is disconnected from the requisition process, the employee may then have to copy those details into another system.

That introduces several potential problems.

First is duplicate data entry. Item numbers, quantities, descriptions, and other information already exist in the supplier catalog, but someone must enter them again.

There is also the question of catalog accuracy. An internally maintained catalog can require ongoing updates as a supplier changes its products. A supplier-hosted PunchOut catalog places that catalog maintenance with the supplier instead. Depending on the organization’s agreement with the supplier, the PunchOut catalog can also make negotiated or customer-specific pricing available to the buyer.

Then there is the human side of the process. With greater purchasing friction, employees look for shortcuts. A process designed to improve control can have the opposite effect if following it requires too much manual work.

PunchOut helps by removing a manual handoff between finding the item and requesting approval to buy it.

How Does PunchOut Work with ReQlogic and Business Central? 

The easiest way to understand PunchOut is to follow a purchase from the requester’s perspective.

Start the Purchase in ReQlogic

The employee pulls up ReQlogic, where the purchase becomes part of the organization’s established requisition process. From there, the user accesses the appropriate PunchOut supplier catalog.

Shop the Supplier’s Catalog

The employee then shops on the supplier-maintained site much as they would use any other ecommerce catalog.

They search for the products they need, choose quantities, and add the items to a cart. Depending on the organization’s arrangement with the supplier, the catalog can reflect products and contracted pricing associated with that customer.

The key difference comes at checkout.

Instead of placing an independent order directly with the supplier, the user returns the selected items to ReQlogic.

Bring the Cart Back to the Requisition

When the employee finishes shopping, the supplier cart items are brought back into ReQlogic as individual line items on a requisition, ready to route through existing approval workflows and budget controls.

That means the purchase can move forward without manual re-entry, outdated pricing, or off-system purchases that create headaches for finance and AP teams later.

Route the Requisition for Approval

Returning the cart does not mean the purchase has automatically been authorized.

The requisition can still move through ReQlogic’s configured approval process. That means the organization can apply the routing and controls required for the particular purchase before a purchase order is created.

Business Central itself also includes approval workflow capabilities. Microsoft’s Business Central documentation identifies purchase orders, purchase quotes, and purchase invoices among the records that can trigger approval workflows, and Microsoft provides tools for configuring approval users, limits, notifications, and workflow steps.

ReQlogic adds a procurement-focused layer around that ERP foundation, with advanced approval routing and role-specific configuration designed for organizations that need more structured purchasing controls.

Information can be required, read-only, defaulted, or hidden depending on the user or stage of the process.

Continue to the Purchase Order

After the necessary approvals are complete, the purchasing process can continue by creating a purchase order in Business Central.

ReQlogic is designed to extend Business Central rather than replace it. Business Central remains the financial and ERP foundation, while ReQlogic adds purpose-built procurement capabilities around requisitions, approval routing, purchasing control, PunchOut, and related workflows.

Where applicable, ReQlogic can also use cXML to transmit an approved purchase order back to a supplier that supports that functionality.

PunchOut makes Purchasing Easier without Giving Up Control

Procurement technology has to serve two groups whose needs can sometimes seem to conflict.

• Employees want purchasing to be easy.
• Finance and procurement want it to be controlled.

PunchOut helps bring those goals together.

For the requester, it provides a familiar, frictionless shopping experience. For procurement and finance, the purchase is easily routed through the proper channels for approval. The shopping experience may be simpler, but the controls do not have to disappear with it.

When should an Organization Consider PunchOut?

PunchOut will not be necessary for every supplier or purchasing situation. Its value is strongest when supplier shopping is frequent enough that the disconnect between a supplier catalog and the requisition process creates unnecessary work.

It may be worth considering if your organization:

• Regularly purchases from suppliers that support PunchOut.
• Has negotiated or customer-specific supplier pricing.
• Has employees manually copying supplier-cart information into requisitions.
• Maintains internal catalog information that can become outdated.
• Wants employees to use preferred suppliers without making purchasing unnecessarily difficult.
• Needs purchases to follow approval workflows before a PO is issued.
• Uses Business Central but needs more structured procurement workflows around the ERP.

Supplier support is an important part of the equation. PunchOut relies on the supplier having compatible PunchOut capabilities and an appropriate connection being established. ReQlogic connects the procurement process to the supplier’s catalog; the supplier continues to maintain its own ecommerce environment.

Connect Purchasing Convenience with Procurement Control

PunchOut’s value comes from connecting the familiar online shopping experience to the procurement process.

Instead of finding an item in one place and recreating the request somewhere else, PunchOut gives organizations a more direct path from supplier catalog to requisition to approval to purchase order.

For organizations using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, ReQlogic brings PunchOut together with configurable requisitions, advanced approval workflows, purchasing controls, receiving, and invoice matching to create a more complete procurement process around Business Central.

Want to see how PunchOut works inside a ReQlogic requisition? Book a demo today.