How to find where your company is overpaying on the same item

The price differences are real. They are just invisible until someone reads the invoices.

By Jeppe Jørgensen, Founder — Onpoint

The same item. Different prices. Nobody notices.

Department A buys printer paper from Supplier X for 8.40 per ream.

Department B buys the same paper from the same supplier for 9.80.

Neither department knows. Finance sees two separate cost centre totals. The difference never surfaces.

This is not unusual. It happens across categories, suppliers, and locations - quietly, every month.

The reason is simple: prices live in invoice line items, not in cost centre summaries. And line items are almost never read across departments.

Where the price gaps come from

Price differences across departments and locations usually come from a few predictable sources.

Separate purchasing decisions Each department negotiates its own deals. Nobody knows what others agreed to.
Different time periods A contract renewed last year at one price. Another renewed three years ago at a different rate. Both are still running.
Supplier inconsistency Some suppliers quietly charge different prices to different buyers - even for identical items. Without visibility, this goes unnoticed.
No consolidated volume If departments bought together, they would qualify for better volume pricing. But they buy separately, so nobody captures it.

How to surface price differences across the company

Read the invoices at line level

Totals hide prices. You need item description, unit price, quantity, and supplier - per invoice, per department. That is where the comparisons live.

Match like-for-like across departments

Find the same item or service across different departments and locations. Same supplier, different prices. Or different suppliers, same item.

Rank by impact

Not every price difference is worth chasing. Focus on high-volume items with large gaps. A 15% difference on something bought 200 times a year matters. A 5% gap on a one-off does not.

Act on the findings

With the data in hand: renegotiate with the higher-price supplier, consolidate purchasing to capture volume rates, or switch departments to the better deal.

What realistic savings look like

The range varies by industry and procurement maturity. But consistent patterns emerge.

5-15% on indirect spend When price differences across departments are identified and consolidated, indirect categories typically yield 5-15% savings.
Supplier rationalisation Companies often discover they use 3-4 suppliers for the same category. Consolidating to 1-2 with better terms is a common outcome.
Volume pricing What looks like a fixed price is often tiered. When departments combine their purchasing, volume thresholds unlock lower unit rates.

The savings are there. They are just currently invisible.

Summary

Price differences across departments are common and almost always invisible
They come from separate negotiations, inconsistent supplier pricing, and no consolidated volume
Finding them requires reading invoices at line level across all departments
The highest-impact differences are on high-volume, recurring items
Once visible, consolidation and renegotiation typically yield 5-15% on affected categories

Frequently asked questions

How common are price differences across departments?

Very common - especially in companies where departments purchase independently. Studies on indirect procurement typically find 10-20% of spending is on items where price differences exist across business units.

Does this require a full procurement transformation?

No. Identifying the differences requires data, not a new process. The action that follows - renegotiating or consolidating - is straightforward once you know where the gaps are.

What if suppliers have legitimate reasons for different prices?

They sometimes do - different contract terms, service levels, or volumes. But you cannot evaluate that without seeing the differences first. Most of the time, the reason is just that nobody asked.

How does Onpoint surface these differences?

Onpoint reads invoice line items across all departments and maps them to categories. When the same item appears at different prices, it flags the comparison automatically - no manual analysis required.

Is this only relevant for large companies?

No. Even a company with 5-10 departments sees meaningful price differences across locations or teams. The absolute savings are smaller, but the percentage opportunity is the same.

Related resources

Visibility

See where your company pays different prices for the same thing.

Onpoint surfaces price differences across departments automatically.

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