An effective purchase order process uses clear approval thresholds, required PO information, vendor controls, receiving procedures, and invoice matching to keep purchasing consistent and accountable. These purchase order best practices help reduce unauthorized spending, incomplete orders, approval delays, and discrepancies between what was ordered, received, and billed.
The cost of an inefficient process can add up quickly. APQC reported in 2026 that organizations spend roughly $14 to more than $54 to process a single purchase order, showing how widely procurement process efficiency can vary between organizations.
As purchase volume grows, spreadsheets, email approvals, and disconnected records can make it harder for procurement, operations, and finance teams to track commitments, manage exceptions, and resolve invoice issues. A structured purchase order management process, supported by workflow automation where appropriate, gives teams clearer control from purchase request through receiving and reconciliation.
A purchase order policy is a set of internal rules that governs how purchases are requested, approved, documented, and authorized. It defines when a purchase order is required, who has authority to approve spending, and what standards employees must follow before committing company funds.
A clear policy gives finance, procurement, and operations teams a consistent framework for managing purchases. It also reduces the risk of informal buying decisions, inconsistent approvals, and purchases that cannot be easily traced back to an authorized request.
A purchase order policy should clearly establish the rules employees are expected to follow.
The policy should be specific enough that employees know when approval is required and who is responsible for each decision. The detailed steps for carrying out those rules belong in the purchase order procedure.
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A purchase order policy establishes the rules. A purchase order procedure explains how employees follow them. For example, the policy might require finance approval for purchases above a certain amount. The procedure would explain how the request is submitted, routed for approval, and converted into a purchase order.
Keeping the two separate helps businesses avoid policies that are too vague and procedures that lack clear controls.
Informal purchasing becomes harder to control as a company adds employees, departments, vendors, locations, and purchase volume. Different teams may begin using their own approval methods, records, or purchasing practices, making it difficult to maintain consistent oversight.
Formal PO governance creates common rules across the business. It clarifies purchasing authority for employees, gives procurement a consistent process to follow, and provides finance with a better record of approved commitments. That foundation becomes increasingly important as the purchase order process grows more complex and more people become involved in requesting, approving, receiving, and reconciling purchases.
Weak purchase order policies make it difficult to control spending and maintain a reliable record of what the business has committed to buy. Problems usually appear when purchasing decisions are handled through email, spreadsheets, verbal approvals, or different processes across departments. As purchase volume grows, these gaps create more work for procurement and finance and increase the chance that incorrect or unauthorized purchases reach suppliers.
When employees are unclear about who can approve a purchase, orders may be placed before the appropriate person has reviewed them. Finance may only become aware of the commitment when an invoice arrives.
For example, two department managers may independently order similar equipment because neither can see the other's approved purchase. The business now has duplicate spend and may need to return the excess goods or carry inventory it did not plan to hold. Clear approval authority, spending limits, and rules for purchase requisitions help prevent employees from committing spend before a purchase has been reviewed.
A purchase order needs enough detail for the supplier, receiving team, procurement team, and finance team to understand exactly what was approved.
Missing quantities, pricing, delivery dates, payment terms, item numbers, or shipping instructions can create questions later in the purchase order process. Buyers may have to search through emails to determine which version of an order is correct, while receiving teams may lack the information needed to verify a delivery.
Incomplete PO records also make invoice reconciliation harder because finance cannot easily confirm whether the supplier billed according to the approved purchase.
Approval controls lose much of their value when different employees follow different processes. One department may require written approval before PO creation, while another accepts a manager's verbal confirmation. Some buyers may route large purchases through finance, while others approve similar amounts within their own department.
These inconsistencies make purchasing oversight harder and create uncertainty over who authorized a purchase. A structured PO process should apply the same approval rules whenever the same conditions are met.
Weak purchasing controls can also result in employees buying from unapproved vendors or using pricing that was never formally reviewed. This can happen when supplier information is stored across individual spreadsheets, inboxes, or previous purchase orders. A buyer may use an outdated quote, select a different supplier, or accept changed payment terms without realizing that another agreement already exists.
A clear purchase order policy should define how vendors are selected, when pricing requires additional review, and how changes to an approved purchase are documented.
Problems often become visible when goods arrive, or the supplier submits an invoice. If the receiving team cannot find the corresponding purchase order, it may be unclear whether the delivery was expected, whether the quantities are correct, or whether part of the order is still outstanding. Finance faces a similar problem when an invoice does not match the original PO. A structured three-way match compares three records:
Differences in quantity, price, freight, or other order details can then be investigated before payment is approved.
A purchase order process should leave a clear record of who requested the purchase, who approved it, what was ordered, what changed, what was received, and what was ultimately invoiced. That record becomes difficult to reconstruct when approvals are buried in email threads, PO details are changed manually, or departments maintain separate spreadsheets.
A stronger purchase order management process keeps the relevant decisions and documents connected. This gives finance and operations a clearer history when reviewing disputed invoices, investigating exceptions, preparing for an audit, or determining why a purchase exceeded its approved amount.
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A strong purchase order policy gives employees clear rules for requesting, approving, issuing, receiving, and closing purchases. As purchase volume increases, those rules help procurement, operations, and finance teams work from the same process instead of relying on email approvals, spreadsheets, or individual judgment.
Start by stating which purchases require a formal PO and which, if any, are exempt. A business might require purchase orders for inventory, raw materials, equipment, freight, or any purchase above a defined amount. Some low-value, non-inventory purchases may follow a separate process.
The policy should also address retrospective POs. Creating a purchase order after goods or services have already been ordered weakens the approval process because the financial commitment has already been made. Clear rules prevent employees from deciding for themselves when to use a purchase order and give finance a more reliable view of approved spending.
Approval authority should reflect the value and risk of the purchase. For example:
These amounts are examples only. Each business should set thresholds based on its size, purchasing volume, organizational structure, and financial controls.
Approval rules may also vary by department, location, vendor, or purchase type. Routine inventory replenishment from an approved supplier may follow a different path from a large equipment purchase or an order placed with a new vendor. The important requirement is consistency. Employees should know who must approve a purchase before the PO is issued.
Every purchase order should contain enough information for the supplier and internal teams to understand exactly what has been approved.
Standardizing these fields reduces follow-up questions and gives procurement, receiving, and finance teams a consistent record to work from.
When quantities, prices, delivery requirements, or approval details are missing, downstream teams have to verify information manually. That slows receiving, complicates invoice matching, and increases the risk of discrepancies between what was approved, delivered, and billed.
The policy should explain when employees are required to use approved suppliers and what process applies when a new vendor is needed. Vendor controls may cover negotiated pricing, payment terms, required documentation, supplier records, or additional approval requirements.
For recurring purchases, consistent vendor records also make it easier for procurement teams to compare pricing, lead times, previous orders, and outstanding commitments. When a new or nonstandard vendor is needed, the purchase should follow a defined review process before the order is released.
Where staffing allows, one person should not control every stage of a significant purchase. A basic division of responsibilities may look like this:
Separating these responsibilities creates independent checks throughout the PO process. Smaller businesses may not have enough staff to separate every task. In those cases, higher-value purchases, unusual vendors, or exceptions can require an additional manager or finance review.
Purchase orders often change after approval. A supplier may revise a price, ship a different quantity, substitute an item, or change a delivery date. The policy should state which changes require renewed approval.
A minor scheduling adjustment may not need another approval, while an increase in quantity or total purchase value may require the PO to return to an approver. Emergency purchases also need clear rules. Employees should know what qualifies as an emergency, who can authorize it, what documentation is required, and how the purchase should be recorded afterward.
Without defined exception handling, urgent or unusual purchases often move into email, spreadsheets, or verbal approvals and become difficult to trace.
The purchase order process should continue after the supplier ships the goods or provides the service. Receiving teams should record what actually arrived and note shortages, damaged goods, substitutions, or partial deliveries. That information should remain connected to the corresponding PO so procurement and finance can see what is still outstanding. Before payment, the business may also use a three-way match to compare:
The purchase order
The receiving record
The supplier invoice
This helps identify differences in quantity, price, freight, or other purchase details before an invoice is approved. Once the purchase has been fully received and any discrepancies are resolved, the PO should be closed. Leaving completed purchase orders open can make outstanding commitments and incoming inventory appear higher than they actually are.
The final PO record should make it possible to trace who requested and approved the purchase, what changed, what was received, which invoice was matched to the PO, and how any exceptions were resolved. Consistent receiving, closeout, and recordkeeping give procurement and finance a cleaner purchase history and make the purchase order lifecycle easier to review over time.
When receiving spans multiple locations or warehouses, NEX Warehouse Management Software can keep receiving activity and inventory movement connected to the operational records used by purchasing.
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A purchase order approval workflow turns policy into a repeatable process. It defines how a request moves from initial submission through approval, PO creation, receiving, invoice reconciliation, and exception handling. A practical workflow usually follows these steps:
Create the purchase request.
The process should begin with an internal purchase request or, where used, a purchase requisition before an order is placed with the supplier. The request should give the approver enough context to decide whether the purchase should move forward. For inventory purchases, this may include current stock requirements, open customer orders, expected demand, or production needs. Using one consistent entry point keeps requests from being scattered across email, spreadsheets, chat messages, and verbal instructions.
Route the request for approval.
Once submitted, the request should go to the appropriate approver based on the rules already defined in the purchase order policy. Routing may depend on purchase value, department, location, purchase type, or vendor status. At higher purchase volumes, automated routing can reduce delays caused by manually forwarding requests and following up with approvers.
Create and issue the purchase order.
After approval, the authorized request becomes a formal purchase order. The PO should carry forward the approved quantities, pricing, vendor, delivery requirements, and commercial terms without unnecessary re-entry. This reduces the risk of differences between what was approved internally and what was ultimately sent to the supplier.
Record receiving activity.
When the order arrives, the receiving team should record what was actually delivered against the corresponding PO. Partial shipments, shortages, damaged goods, or substitutions should be captured at this stage so procurement and finance can see whether the order is complete or still outstanding. For inventory-based businesses, timely receiving also helps keep system records aligned with what is physically in the warehouse.
Reconcile the PO, receipt, and invoice.
When the supplier invoice arrives, finance can compare it with the purchase order and receiving record. A three-way match checks: What was ordered → What was received → What was invoiced. If the quantities, prices, and received goods agree, the invoice can move forward for payment. If they do not, the discrepancy should be resolved first.
Resolve exceptions and close the loop.
Price discrepancies, excess quantities, missing receipts, partial deliveries, invoices without a PO, or material changes after approval should follow a defined exception path. Rather than handling these issues through separate email threads, the exception should remain connected to the purchase record until it is resolved. Recurring issues such as frequent invoices without POs, repeated price mismatches, or long approval delays can also reveal where the purchase order process needs improvement.
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A purchase order should give procurement, the supplier, receiving, and finance enough information to process the transaction without reconstructing the details later. The exact fields will vary by business, but the data should support approval, fulfillment, receiving, invoice matching, and reporting. A useful way to set requirements is to consider how each field will be used downstream.
The PO should identify the supplier clearly and use the correct vendor record. Depending on the business, this may include the supplier name, address, contact information, vendor number, currency, and agreed payment terms.
Consistent supplier data matters when a company buys from multiple vendors with similar names, operates across currencies, or maintains negotiated terms with specific suppliers.
Each purchase order line should state what is being purchased, how much is required, and the agreed price.
For product-based businesses, using the correct SKU or item number is especially important. A vague description such as “replacement parts” gives receiving and inventory teams little information to work with.
Quantities, unit prices, and total values should also reflect what was actually approved. If those details change materially after approval, the PO should follow the company’s change-control rules rather than being edited without review.
Delivery information should tell the supplier where the order needs to go and when it is expected. For companies with multiple warehouses or locations, a correct ship-to address is essential. The PO may also need to specify requested delivery dates, freight terms, shipping instructions, or other requirements that affect how the order is fulfilled.
Clear delivery data also helps purchasing teams distinguish between a supplier delay and an internal receiving problem when an order remains open.
Internal references connect the purchase to the part of the business responsible for the cost. Depending on the company, that may include a department, warehouse, branch, project, cost center, or other accounting reference.
Capturing this information when the PO is created reduces the need for finance to determine the correct allocation after the invoice arrives. It also gives managers a cleaner view of spending by area of responsibility.
The purchase record should show who requested the order and who approved it under the company’s policy. This creates a traceable approval record. If finance later needs to understand why a purchase was made or why a particular amount was approved, the authorization history should be available without searching through email threads.
For higher-risk purchases, businesses may also record the approval date, approval level, or any exception that was granted.
Some purchases are made in response to a specific operational need. Connecting the PO to that need can make the purchase much easier to understand and manage.
For example, a distributor may buy inventory to fulfill a customer order. A manufacturer may purchase components for a production requirement. A project-based business may buy materials for a specific job. Linking the purchase to the related sales order, inventory requirement, or project gives teams more context and improves visibility into why the purchase exists in the first place.
The goal is to capture enough information at PO creation that the same transaction can move cleanly through approval, fulfillment, receiving, and invoice reconciliation without repeated manual clarification.
Approval controls should reflect both the value of a purchase and the level of risk involved. Routine orders should move without unnecessary friction, while larger or unusual commitments receive additional review. The strongest policies use a mix of spend limits, role-based authority, and exception rules rather than relying on dollar thresholds alone.
Spend thresholds define how far a purchase needs to move up the approval chain. A department manager may approve routine purchases within a set limit, while higher-value commitments require review from finance, operations leadership, or an executive.
The limits should fit the company’s purchasing volume and management structure. If thresholds are set too low, routine purchases get delayed. If they are too high, employees may be able to commit significant spend without enough oversight.
Approval authority should also match the type of purchase and the person responsible for that area of the business.
This helps avoid situations where an employee approves spending outside their area of responsibility simply because the purchase falls below a dollar limit.
Some purchases warrant additional review even when the value is relatively low. A new vendor, unusual payment terms, a large prepayment, or spending outside an approved budget can introduce risks that a standard dollar threshold will not catch. These transactions may need an extra procurement or finance review before the PO is released.
The approval policy should make those conditions clear so employees do not have to interpret the rules case by case.
Urgent purchases need a faster path, but they should remain visible and documented. For example, a manufacturer may need an emergency replacement part to avoid extended downtime, or a warehouse may need to secure stock quickly after an unexpected shortage.
In those situations, the policy should specify who can approve the exception and what documentation must be completed afterward. That keeps emergency purchases from becoming a routine way to bypass the normal PO process.
A PO should return for review when a change materially alters the original commitment. A significant price increase, quantity change, new line item, vendor change, or revised payment term may all justify reapproval. Minor administrative corrections usually do not need the same treatment.
Clear reapproval rules help ensure that the final order still reflects what the business intended to authorize, rather than allowing an approved PO to change substantially after the fact.
Purchase order policies usually fail because the process becomes inconsistent in practice. The most common problems come from workarounds, missing controls, or unclear ownership across procurement, operations, and finance.
These patterns are also useful warning signs. If the business regularly sees invoices without POs, missing approvals, repeated discrepancies, or aging open orders, the issue is usually broader than an individual error. It often indicates that the purchase order process needs clearer rules, easier execution, or stronger workflow controls.
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Workflow automation becomes useful once the purchasing rules are clearly defined. It can apply approval thresholds, required fields, exception rules, and routing logic consistently, reducing the amount of manual follow-up needed to keep the PO process moving. For growing businesses, this is especially helpful when purchase volume is growing faster than procurement or finance headcount.
Instead of relying on employees to forward requests to the right manager, an automated workflow can route each request according to predefined rules.
A routine inventory purchase might go directly to an operations manager, while a higher-value request moves to finance or senior leadership. This reduces approval delays and makes it easier to see where a purchase is waiting. Automation can also provide a defined escalation or reassignment path when an approver is unavailable, preventing requests from sitting in an inbox.
Required fields can prevent incomplete purchase requests from moving forward. If a PO needs a vendor, quantity, price, warehouse, delivery date, or cost allocation, the workflow can require that information before submission. The same approach can be used to enforce business rules, such as requiring additional approval for a new supplier or an out-of-budget purchase.
This reduces the amount of time procurement and finance spend chasing missing information later.
Management attention is usually most valuable when a purchase involves an exception or requires intervention. Automated alerts can flag a request that has been waiting too long, a PO that exceeds an approval threshold, or an order where the received quantity differs from what was expected.
The value comes from directing attention to the transactions that require action rather than asking employees to manually review every open purchase order.
For inventory-based businesses, purchasing decisions often begin somewhere else in the operation. A distributor may need to replenish stock after customer demand reduces available inventory. A manufacturer may need components for planned production. A warehouse may face demand that current stock cannot cover.
Connecting these signals to purchasing gives buyers better context when creating and approving POs. It also reduces the risk of purchasing decisions being made from an isolated spreadsheet that does not reflect current orders or inventory requirements.
Automation can also improve what happens after the PO is issued. When receiving activity is recorded against the original purchase order, procurement can see which quantities have arrived, which remain open, and where discrepancies need attention. Finance gains a cleaner record to use when the corresponding invoice arrives.
This shared visibility becomes increasingly valuable when a business manages partial shipments, multiple warehouses, or a high volume of open purchase orders.
A structured workflow can maintain a single history of the purchase from request through approval, PO creation, receiving, changes, and closeout. That makes it easier to answer practical questions later: Who approved the purchase? Was the price changed? Has the full quantity been received? Why is the PO still open?
It also reduces dependence on individual inboxes and spreadsheets as the record of what happened.
For businesses using QuickBooks, this type of operational workflow can sit around the accounting process rather than requiring QuickBooks to handle every purchasing control itself. NEX can support the operational side of purchasing through configurable workflows, approvals, validations, alerts, inventory, and related order processes while QuickBooks remains the accounting system of record.
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Purchase orders are more useful when they are tied to the operational need that created them. For distributors, manufacturers, and other inventory-based businesses, purchasing decisions often begin with customer demand, stock requirements, production needs, or open sales orders.
Connecting those records gives buyers better context and helps prevent purchasing from becoming a separate process managed in spreadsheets.
Customer orders can provide an important signal for purchasing decisions, particularly when available inventory cannot cover expected demand. Instead of reviewing sales orders in one system and creating purchase orders somewhere else, procurement should be able to see what demand is driving the purchase. This is especially useful for backorders, customer-specific items, or products with long supplier lead times.
The result is a clearer link between what customers need and what the business needs to buy. NEX Order Management can support that connection by bringing customer demand, inventory availability, purchasing, and downstream fulfillment into a more connected operational process.
Not every PO is tied to a specific customer order. Many businesses purchase stock based on replenishment requirements, safety levels, planned production, or expected demand. The purchase record should still show what inventory need it is intended to address. That helps buyers avoid ordering stock that is already available, already on order, or no longer needed.
For businesses that need purchasing decisions to reflect current stock, allocations, and incoming quantities, NEX's Inventory Management can help keep that inventory information connected to the broader operational workflow.
An open purchase order represents inventory the business expects to receive, which can affect decisions before the goods physically arrive. Sales and operations teams may need to know:
What has already been ordered from suppliers
How much is still outstanding
When the inventory is expected
Whether incoming quantities are already committed to customer demand
This visibility can help prevent unnecessary duplicate purchases and give customer-facing teams better information when discussing product availability.
Receiving is the point where expected inventory becomes physical stock. When receipts are recorded against the corresponding PO, teams can see whether the order was received in full, partially received, or delivered with discrepancies. Inventory records can then reflect what was actually received rather than what the business expected to receive.
This becomes particularly important for partial shipments and multi-warehouse operations, where the same PO may be received across different dates or locations.
Purchasing touches several parts of the business. Operations needs to know what is coming in, procurement needs to manage open supplier commitments, and finance needs visibility into the purchases that will eventually become invoices.
When purchase orders, inventory requirements, receiving activity, and related order information remain connected, those teams can work from the same transaction history instead of maintaining separate spreadsheets or reconciling different versions of the same purchase. For businesses using QuickBooks, this connected operational layer can also help keep purchasing and inventory activity organized before the related accounting transactions reach the books.
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Review the current purchase order process: Identify where requests originate, how approvals happen, where spreadsheets or email are being used, and where delays or exceptions occur.
Define roles, approval authority, and purchasing rules: Establish who can request, approve, issue, receive, and close purchases, along with the thresholds and exception rules already covered earlier.
Standardize required purchase information: Define the information every PO needs so procurement, suppliers, receiving, and finance are working from the same record.
Connect purchasing with inventory, orders, and receiving: Purchases should reflect stock requirements, customer demand, open orders, incoming inventory, and actual receipts.
Automate and review the process over time: Apply workflow rules, monitor recurring exceptions, and update the policy as purchase volume or operational complexity changes.
A purchase order policy becomes much easier to enforce when purchasing activity sits inside a connected operational workflow. NEX can help businesses manage approvals, purchasing, inventory, receiving, and related order activity in one system, reducing the need to piece the process together across spreadsheets, email, and separate tools. Exact workflows and enabled capabilities depend on the company’s requirements and configuration.
NEX supports configurable workflows, approvals, alerts, reminders, and process controls that can reflect how a business actually authorizes purchases.
Instead of relying on employees to forward requests manually or remember who needs to approve the next step, purchasing activity can follow a defined process based on the company’s own rules. This becomes especially useful when purchasing is closely tied to broader order management activity and multiple teams need visibility into the same transaction.
NEX can use required-field validations and workflow controls to help keep incomplete records from moving forward. For purchasing teams, that means important information can be captured earlier, while alerts and reminders can surface approvals or tasks that are still waiting for action. This reduces the amount of manual follow-up needed as purchase volume increases.
Many purchase orders are created because inventory is running low, customer demand is increasing, or open orders require additional stock.
NEX can connect purchasing decisions with inventory management, giving buyers visibility into available, allocated, incoming, and on-hand quantities before another order is placed. That helps purchasing decisions reflect current operational demand instead of relying on isolated spreadsheets or manually updated reports.
The purchasing process does not end when the PO is sent to the supplier. Receiving activity still needs to be recorded against the expected order so teams can see what arrived, what remains outstanding, and where discrepancies need attention.
For businesses with more complex receiving or multi-location inventory, NEX can connect those activities through its warehouse management workflows, helping purchasing and warehouse teams work from the same operational record.
Businesses using QuickBooks do not necessarily need to replace it to strengthen purchasing controls. NEX is designed to manage the operational side of the workflow while QuickBooks remains connected as the accounting system. This gives procurement and operations more structure around purchasing while preserving the financial system already used for the books.
A purchase order policy should be practical enough to guide day-to-day purchasing and useful during audits or process reviews. Use the checklist below to evaluate whether your current policy covers the controls needed across purchasing, approvals, receiving, invoice matching, and record-keeping.
A “yes” to every item does not necessarily mean the process is working well in practice. Review a sample of recent purchase orders and look for signs that employees are working around the policy, such as retrospective POs, missing approvals, invoice mismatches, unresolved open orders, or frequent exceptions.
Those patterns can show where the written policy, approval workflow, or supporting systems need to be adjusted.
A clear purchase order policy helps procurement, operations, and finance follow the same rules for approvals, receiving, invoice matching, and recordkeeping. As purchasing becomes more complex, the process should remain easy to follow and visible across teams.
Watch for signs that the policy is no longer working as intended, such as retrospective POs, repeated invoice discrepancies, delayed approvals, or spreadsheet-based tracking. For businesses that need more structure around purchasing, NEX Order Management can help connect purchasing with orders, inventory, receiving, and related workflows while QuickBooks remains the accounting system of record.
Common types of purchase orders include standard purchase orders, planned purchase orders, blanket purchase orders, and contract purchase orders. The right purchase type depends on how often the business buys from the supplier, how predictable the demand is, and whether quantities or delivery schedules are known in advance. A clear purchase order policy should define when each type can be used so buyers follow a consistent process.
The purchase order process typically starts with a purchase requisition, which is an internal request to approve a purchase. Once approved, the buyer creates a purchase order and sends it to the supplier. The supplier fulfills the order, the receiving team records what arrives, and finance compares the purchase order, receiving record, and invoice before payment. A well-designed purchase order process keeps each step connected and gives teams a clear record of the entire purchase.
Yes. Businesses can keep QuickBooks as their accounting system of record while using a connected operational system to manage purchasing, approvals, inventory, receiving, and related order workflows. This can give operations teams more control over the purchase order process without requiring the business to replace QuickBooks.
Effective purchase order management improves spend visibility, approval control, supplier coordination, receiving accuracy, and invoice reconciliation. It also makes it easier to track purchase commitments and identify open or overdue orders. For growing businesses, a structured purchase order management process can reduce reliance on manual PO processes, inconsistent PO formats, and separate spreadsheets used by procurement, operations, and finance.
Purchase order automation becomes useful when manual processing begins causing approval delays, duplicate entry, missing information, or poor visibility into open orders. Purchase order software or a broader purchase order management system can automate routing, required fields, alerts, and status tracking. Businesses should first establish clear purchasing rules, then use automation to enforce those rules consistently rather than trying to automate a poorly defined process.