Overview
The Cost avoidance tab shows the financial value of spend prevented through your approval controls. It helps finance teams quantify procurement governance impact and identify which departments, categories, vendors, requesters, or approvers are driving the most cost avoidance.
Prerequisites
Make sure your admin has granted you the Dashboards: Spend View and Expense View privileges. Without these, the Dashboard page (and its Cost avoidance tab) won't be available in Standard mode.
Your admin can check or update this by navigating to General Settings → Configurations → Manage Privileges.
How to access
Go to Insights → Dashboard from the left navigation menu, then click the Cost avoidance tab.
What you will see
Request spend breakdown
A donut chart showing:
Total requests — total number of requests
Total cost avoided — total dollar value of rejected requests
Rejected requests — count of rejected requests
Legend: Total approved, Total rejected
Monthly savings trend
A bar chart showing monthly data with three data series:
Total requests
Total approved
Total rejected
Savings breakdown & details
A combined bar chart and table. Use the dropdown at the top right to switch between views:
Department — Cost avoided by top 10 departments
Category — Cost avoided by top 10 categories
Vendor — Cost avoided by top 10 vendors
Requester — Cost avoided by top 10 requesters
Approver — Cost avoided by top 10 approvers
Table columns: Name, Rejection, Amount, % of total, Avg. per request
FAQ
Q: Where is the Cost avoidance tab in ProcureDesk?
Go to Insights → Dashboard and click the Cost avoidance tab. It is one of six tabs within the Dashboard page alongside Committed, Actual spend, Expense, Operation, and Cycle time.
Q: How is cost avoidance calculated in ProcureDesk?
Cost avoidance is calculated as the total value of rejected requests, representing spend avoided due to approval controls. This definition is shown at the top of the tab.
Q: What does "Total cost avoided" mean?
It is the total dollar value of all rejected requests — spend that was prevented from being approved through your procurement workflows.
Q: What does the Monthly savings trend chart show?
It shows the monthly volume of total requests, approved requests, and rejected requests over time. The rejected requests bars represent your cost avoidance for each month.
Q: How do I see cost avoidance broken down by department, vendor, or approver?
In the Savings breakdown & details section, use the dropdown at the top right to switch between Department, Category, Vendor, Requester, and Approver. The bar chart and table update to show the top 10 entries for your selected view.
Q: What does "Avg. per request" mean in the savings breakdown table?
It shows the average cost avoided per rejected request for that entry - calculated as the total amount divided by the number of rejections.