Reading a purchase-ledger extract without drowning

Export the year. Then stop looking at totals.

Start with supplier name, invoice date, net value, cost centre, and PO number. VAT is useful later for reconciliations with the return; it is a distraction on day one. Narrative fields help when the supplier master is a graveyard of spellings, but they are not a category.

Merge aliases only when the legal entity is the same. “Smith Ltd”, “Smith Limited”, and a trading style on the invoice can be one row after Companies House agrees. “Smith Facilities” and “Smith Labour” are not a merge even if they share a phone number. Put the disputed list in front of the buying lead before you build concentration tables. A top-ten that secretly contains one group three times will be torn up in the briefing, and it should be.

Strip intercompany if the question is external leakage. Leave it in if the question is which entity is parking cost. Say which choice you made in the kick-off notes so nobody “discovers” it in the room.

Do not recode every line into a consultant’s taxonomy. Use the cost-centre names the budget holders already fight over. If stationery sits inside “office” in one site and “FM” in another, that split is a finding, not a mess to hide.

When the file still contains payroll or card numbers, send it back. A spend map built on a leak is not a professional souvenir.