Find a Better Price
We look at what you buy and where, then find a better price — a cheaper vendor, or a drop at your current one you can renegotiate to.
Where
Start from Price lookup, an Opportunities scan, or an uploaded invoice — any of the three surfaces cheaper options.
Click "Switch"
Switch adds the item to your planned-changes list — a shopping list of switches you intend to make. Your catalog doesn't change yet.
Status
It lands in Savings as a Pending Confirmation — a queued switch waiting for you to order.
Place the order yourself
Place the order the way you normally would — vendor website, your buyer, your PO process, whatever fits.
You do this
You order through your normal process. We never order on your behalf.
Mark it complete
Come back and confirm the switch. That turns projected savings into captured savings on your dashboard.
Result
Your catalog updates, your capture rate rises, and the savings are booked.
Three ways to surface savings — use whichever fits how you work. They all end in the same place: a better price you can act on, whether that's a cheaper vendor or a renegotiation with your current one.
Place the order the way you normally would — vendor website, your buyer, EDI, your PO process. Use the vendor and price on the pending switch as your reference, then come back to finalize once it's placed. We never order on your behalf — the transaction stays entirely with you.
Why?
Ordering would mean handling your payment methods, vendor logins, and approvals — parts of your business we intentionally don't touch. You keep control of every purchase; we stay focused on finding you better prices.
✓
Catalog Updates
The item's vendor and price update to what you confirmed, so future benchmarks use the right baseline.
✓
Capture Rate Rises
Your capture rate reflects how much of your total available savings you've realized — and it just went up.
✓
Booked Savings
Confirmed savings roll into your dashboard total and build the ROI story you can share with your team.
What if I never place the order?
It stays pending indefinitely — no clock, no penalty. Decide against it? Dismiss it and it's gone. Nothing was charged or changed, so there's nothing to undo.
What if the price changed by the time I ordered?
When you confirm, enter the actual price you paid — your savings reflect what you really captured, not the projection. Vendor prices drift, so the number on your dashboard stays real.
What if the best price is at my current vendor?
Then it's a renegotiation, not a switch. When your current vendor lists below what you're paying, we flag it so you can take that listing back to them as evidence and negotiate down — same vendor, same relationship. It runs the same Flag → Confirm flow, so the savings still land on your dashboard.
Can Sourcemarking place orders for me?
No — that's deliberate, not a missing feature. Staying out of your ordering flow means we never touch your payment methods, vendor credentials, or PO systems. You keep vendor relationships and timing; we stay in the 'which vendor at what price' layer.
How do preferred vs blocked vendors work?
Mark a vendor preferred to have recommendations favor them — handy for contracts, rebates, or relationships you're building. Mark one blocked to exclude it entirely. With multiple locations, both settings are per-location, so Milwaukee can differ from Chicago.
Why aren't all my vendors in the results?
We only benchmark vendors that publish their prices and allow us to read them. Three reasons one might not appear: some price by contract (e.g. Sysco, McKesson). Some require a membership login (e.g. Costco). And some ask automated tools not to read their site — Grainger, McMaster-Carr and RockAuto say so in their published terms, and we respect that. In every case we won't quote a price we haven't seen. You can still track any of them as your vendor and record what you pay; they simply don't set a benchmark, and we'll price the same item at the vendors we can read.
What's the difference between "Projected", "On the Table", and "Confirmed" Savings?
Projected — what you'd save following every recommendation we've surfaced. On the Table — projected minus what you've confirmed, i.e. your remaining opportunity. Confirmed — savings you've actually captured after ordering and marking switches complete. Your dashboard leads with Confirmed because that's the number you can defend to your CFO.