Maverick spend: what it is and how to cut it

Published 14 August 2026 · 5 min read

Maverick spend is purchasing that happens outside your agreed contracts and processes. Someone needs laptops, does not use the preferred supplier, and buys them on a card. Individually harmless. In aggregate, it is usually the single largest recoverable saving sitting in a spend file.

Why it costs more than people assume

The obvious cost is price — you pay list instead of contracted rate. The larger costs are less visible:

Volume leakage. Spend that should count toward a tiered discount does not, so you never reach the next tier.
Rebate loss. Rebates are calculated on contracted volume. Off-contract buying is invisible to that calculation.
Admin drag. Every one-off supplier needs onboarding, a payment record, and a line in the audit trail.
Risk. Unvetted suppliers have not passed your compliance checks.

How to measure it

You cannot reduce what you have not quantified, and quantifying it requires classified spend. The method:

Classify every transaction to a category.
For each category, list your contracted suppliers.
Sum spend in that category going to anyone else.
Express it as a percentage of category spend.

A category running above 15–20% off-contract is worth investigating. Above 40% and the contract is arguably not being used at all.

Why it happens

It is worth being honest here, because the usual response — more policy, more approvals — often makes it worse. People go around the process for three reasons:

They do not know a contract exists. Most common by a distance, and the cheapest to fix.
The process is slower than the need. If requisition takes five days and the part is needed tomorrow, the card wins.
The contracted supplier cannot deliver. A legitimate reason that indicates a sourcing problem, not a compliance one.

What actually reduces it

Ranked roughly by effect per unit of effort:

Publish the contracted supplier list where people buy. Not in a policy PDF on the intranet.
Make the compliant route faster than the workaround. Pre-approved catalogues for routine, low-value items remove most of the motive.
Feed back the number to budget holders. Department-level off-contract percentages change behaviour more reliably than a policy reminder.
Fix the sourcing gaps. Where the contracted supplier genuinely cannot serve, that is your finding, not a violation.

A realistic target

Zero maverick spend is not a goal, it is a fantasy that costs more to chase than it recovers. Getting a category from 35% to 10% is a real result. Getting from 10% to 5% usually is not worth the controls it requires.