Divide the procurement system into actions that stay inside your organisation and actions that reach a supplier. The agent may read, draft requisitions and check them against catalogues and contracts at depth 2 or 3. Anything sent to a supplier, such as a purchase order or a request for quotes, is held for a buyer. Awards, contracts and supplier onboarding stay with people.
What does the connection involve, and who owns it?
A procurement system handles the front of purchasing: requisitions, catalogues, approvals, sourcing events, purchase orders and contracts. Much of its work is internal paperwork. Some of it is not. A purchase order sent to a supplier is an offer to buy; once accepted, you are committed. That boundary, between internal drafts and external commitments, is the main line in the agent's grants. Why such commitments are hard to undo is set out in irreversibility in procurement and contracts.
The head of procurement owns the system and the agent's grants. Category buyers own sourcing and supplier relationships. Budget holders approve their own requisitions. The wider finance position is in AI agents for finance: books you can audit. The general approach to connecting agents to business systems is in how do you connect an AI agent to your systems.
Which capabilities should you grant, and at what depth?
| Capability | Depth | Bound | Stays with a person |
|---|---|---|---|
| Read requisitions, orders, catalogues, contracts | 1 | Entities in scope | Nothing |
| Draft a requisition for a requester | 2 | Requester confirms | Submission by requester |
| Check a requisition against catalogue and contract | 1 | None | Nothing |
| Correct coding or catalogue references on a requisition | 3 | Before approval only | Nothing |
| Route for approval | 3 | Per approval matrix | Changing the matrix |
| Approve a requisition | None | Refused by your limits | Budget holder |
| Issue a purchase order to a supplier | 2, held | Always held | Buyer |
| Create a request for quotes | 2, held | Always held | Category buyer |
| Award a sourcing event | None | Refused by your limits | Buyer and approver |
| Create or amend contracts | None | Refused by your limits | Procurement and legal |
| Onboard a new supplier | 2, held | Draft only | Supplier master team |
| Edit catalogues | None | Refused by your limits | Category buyer |
The useful work is checking. A requisition for a laptop that bypasses the agreed catalogue, or for services from a supplier without a contract, costs money and creates risk. The agent can catch these before approval, explain the better route to the requester, and correct references at depth 3 because nothing has left the building.
What are held actions, and how are they worked?
Held actions wait in the buyer's queue with the draft, the evidence and the reason for the hold. For a purchase order, that means the approved requisition, the catalogue or contract price, the supplier's status, and any differences. The buyer checks and issues it.
Issuing could in principle be certified at depth 3 for narrow cases, such as catalogue items from contracted suppliers under a value limit. Most teams start with every order held and move only those narrow cases once Attest has evidence on their own history.
Requests for quotes are held for a different reason. They tell suppliers you are buying, and the choice of who is invited affects fairness between suppliers.
How do you set it up, step by step?
- Person, head of procurement: lists the capabilities the agent's job needs.
- Person, system administrator: creates a dedicated integration user with only those functions.
- Person: sets the agent's limits on the platform to match the table, including which actions are held.
- Agent, depth 1: runs read-only first, checking live requisitions and reporting what it would flag.
- Attest: replays past requisitions and orders and scores checks and drafts.
- Person: enables writes per capability as the agent's certified depth allows.
- Person: tests revocation before go-live.
How do you revoke access?
Per capability on the platform, per function in the procurement system, or entirely by disabling the integration user. A certification run that clears no depth drops the agent to depth 1 the same day. Held purchase orders already in the buyer's queue are unaffected by revocation, because a person still decides them.
What does the audit trail record?
Every attempt is filed as a verdict: requisition or order, the action, the bounds checked, the one that decided, and for held items the buyer who released or rejected them. The procurement system's own history shows changes under the agent's user. Together they answer the question auditors ask about purchasing: who committed the company to this spend, and on what authority?
How does this sit alongside other finance connections?
Procurement data flows into payables, and purchase orders drive invoice matching and cash planning. Grants should be consistent across systems. Treasury needs to see committed spend, and the treasury connection is set out in connecting an AI agent to your treasury management system. Payroll is separate and more sensitive; see connecting an AI agent to your payroll system. Which accounting systems an agent can reach in general is covered in which accounting systems an AI agent can connect to.
Where does it usually go wrong?
Purchase orders send automatically. Some systems transmit an order to the supplier the moment it is created. Then "create" is "issue". Check what the system does on each action before granting it.
The agent becomes a requisition generator. Staff ask it to "order what we need", and it drafts requisitions nobody would have raised. Requisitions should come from a requester's stated need.
Supplier onboarding is treated as paperwork. Adding a supplier is the first step of most payment frauds. Keep it held, and verify bank details independently.
Questions people ask
Can the agent negotiate prices with suppliers?
No. Negotiation commits the company and needs judgement about the relationship. The agent can prepare a buyer with price history and comparisons.
Can the agent raise requisitions automatically when stock runs low?
Only if inventory rules a person set say so, and the requisition still goes through approval. The rule is the authority, not the agent.
What if a requisition is urgent?
Urgency is a reason to route faster, not to skip approval. The agent can flag urgency to the approver and the buyer.