Procurement Settings is the company-wide control center for how purchasing works in BuildOps. It shapes every Purchase Order, Subcontract, and purchasing workflow across your account — from how project costs are tagged, to which Purchase Order Types your team can choose from, to whether BuildOps' AI can read vendor documents and build Purchase Orders automatically.

Procurement Settings is organized into three tabs:

The General tab controls the most foundational procurement behaviors for your company.

Controls how jobs and projects are displayed throughout BuildOps — on lists, dropdowns, reports, and purchasing documents. Choose one of three options:

The change applies immediately, company-wide, across all purchasing documents.

This is one of the most consequential settings on the page. It controls whether BuildOps automatically fills in Project Cost Budget Attributes — Project Phase, Department, Cost Code, Cost Type, and Revenue Type — during Purchase Order creation, AI Recognition, and bill read-backs from your accounting system.

Enable Commitment Change Orders allows formal, auditable modifications to Purchase Orders and Subcontracts after they've been placed.

Enable Subcontract Workflow controls access to all subcontract-related functionality in BuildOps. Subcontracts are a specialized Purchase Order type for subcontractor labor and typically include retainage percentages, completion dates, and scope-of-work descriptions.

Enable Purchase Order PDF Workflow controls PDF generation and templates for Purchase Orders — useful for emailing formal PO documents to vendors, printing for signature, or applying consistent, branded formatting. When this is off, BuildOps uses the legacy PDF format and the PDF Template field will not appear on Purchase Orders.

Enable AP Retainage controls whether retainage — a percentage of payment (typically 5–10%) held back until a project is complete — can be applied to Accounts Payable documents such as vendor bills and subcontractor invoices.

Purchase Order Types are category labels that organize, filter, and report on different kinds of purchasing — think of them as buckets that group similar spending (materials, subcontractor labor, permits, rentals, inventory, and so on).

PO Types aren't just labels — they drive real workflow behavior:

Note: A Purchase Order Type can be edited any time (name, description, Auto-Receive, Use Default Item, and department assignments). It can also be deleted, but if existing Purchase Orders already use that type, deletion may be blocked or those POs may need to be reassigned first.

The AI Recognition tab configures BuildOps' AI-powered scanning of vendor documents (quotes, invoices, subcontractor agreements) into structured Purchase Orders, Subcontracts, and bills.

AI Recognition can't always match a vendor line to a real item in your Item List. This setting picks a single, generic catalog item (for example, “AI – Miscellaneous Material”) that BuildOps assigns to any line it can't confidently match — or to every line on a PO Type that has Use Default Item enabled. If no item is selected here, unrecognized lines are ignored rather than added to the PO.

When enabled, the original vendor PDF used for recognition is automatically saved as an attachment on the resulting Purchase Order or Subcontract — useful for audit trails, vendor disputes, and future reference. When disabled (the default in many accounts), the file is not retained. This only affects new documents going forward; existing POs are not updated retroactively.

Procurement Settings looks slightly different from account to account. If a control described in this guide isn't visible — or appears but can't be turned on — it's almost always one of three reasons:

The table below maps each gated setting to the reason it might be missing and what to do about it:

Q: Why can't I see Procurement Settings in my Company Settings menu at all?

Procurement Settings requires admin-level permissions. Ask your BuildOps Admin or Implementation team to grant your role the “Procurement Settings” permission (Settings → Roles + Permissions → General).

Q: Should I turn on “Do Not Default Project Cost Attributes”?

For most customers, no. Leaving it off lets BuildOps auto-fill cost attributes intelligently, reducing data entry and errors. Only turn it on if your team wants full manual control every time, your projects are complex enough that auto-defaults are often wrong, or you'd rather have costs land as “Unassigned” than on the wrong budget line. Coordinate with Accounting and Project Management before changing it.

Q: What's the difference between Auto-Receive and Use Default Item on a PO Type?

Auto-Receive automatically creates a Receipt — charging the cost to the job — as soon as the PO is saved; it's best for fixed-cost items like permits. Use Default Item forces every AI-generated line on that PO Type to a single generic item instead of matching specific catalog items; it's best for field pickups or cost-only purchases where item-level detail doesn't matter. A PO Type can use either, both, or neither.

Q: If I enable AI Recognition for Date, will it override a PO Date I set manually?

No. The AI Recognition Date setting only applies when you upload a vendor document and use AI Recognition to auto-generate a PO. If you're creating a PO manually, you always control the PO Date.

Q: Do Procurement Settings affect the mobile app?

Procurement Settings are configured on web only, but the decisions made here affect mobile: technicians see the PO Type on PO details, Auto-Receive determines whether a Receipt is already created when they view a PO, and smart cost-attribute defaulting speeds up field pickup requests.