Medius vs Precoro vs Pleo for Procurement & P2P

Your field team members at job sites can submit purchase requisitions directly from Precoro's native iOS and Android mobile app, available on both the App Store and Google Play. The Precoro mobile app allows users to work effectively even when away from their PC; leading actions explicitly include creating purchase requisitions, purchase orders, and receipts, as well as approving or rejecting documents with a single click. The App Store listing confirms field users can "create purchase requests, POs, and receipts from the palm of your hand" and approve or reject documents with a single click. The mobile app also supports attachment management: when installing and using Precoro on a mobile device, the app requests access to media files and camera, which are necessary for uploading attachments or creating them in the app by photographing a printed document. Document editing is also available on mobile, covering Purchase Orders, Purchase Requisitions, Receipts, and Expenses. This covers the intake stage of the buyer's process: field employees submit structured PRs through the mobile app, which then enter Precoro's configured approval workflow before an ops team member (or automated rule) generates the corresponding PO in NetSuite.

This buyer's field team needs to originate purchase requisitions from job sites, which requires mobile PR creation, not just mobile approval. Medius's documented mobile capability centers on a responsive web interface (no native app required) that allows users to access and act on documents from any HTML-compliant browser on phones or tablets. Medius's responsive web design supports consistent use across PCs, laptops, tablets, and mobile devices with no app to download, and the mobile-friendly interface allows users to access, authorize, and comment on documents. However, every mobile-specific reference found is approval-centric: Medius's mobile solution enables approvers to handle invoice management tasks anywhere, and users can access, review, authorize, and comment on invoices as well as purchase requisitions via mobile device - but this describes acting on existing documents in a workflow queue, not creating new requisitions in the field. The MediusGo mobile interface section is explicitly scoped to the invoice application, and the success.medius.com documentation lists "Purchase Requisition" and "Mobile Access" as separate, distinct sections with no documented overlap for mobile PR creation. GetApp confirms Medius enables buyers to create purchase requisitions for indirect spending, but no source documents mobile-initiated PR creation by a field requester rather than a desktop user.

For a $250M technology company whose field team needs to submit purchase requests from job sites before spend is committed, Pleo's mobile footprint is real but misaligned in mechanism. Pleo offers a native iOS and Android app where employees can submit out-of-pocket expenses for reimbursement, request temporary card spending limit increases, and manage card-based purchases — all from the phone. However, the mobile app's documented employee-facing workflows are spend-first and expense-capture-centric: the employee spends (via Pleo card or out-of-pocket) and then submits documentation through the app for review. Pleo does have a 'Create a purchase order' module that enables pre-spend approval, but this feature is restricted to the Beyond plan tier and its help documentation does not describe mobile creation by field employees — the described flow involves adding details and line items in a web-based interface, with reviewers acting in a separate 'Reviews' queue. The buyer's requirement calls for a field-team member to submit a structured purchase request before any commitment to a vendor, feeding an approval chain and ultimately generating a PO in NetSuite; Pleo's mobile app handles the post-spend or card-top-up stage of that journey, not the pre-commitment requisition intake stage.

For a $250M technology company trying to eliminate the 35% maverick spend problem, Medius offers two modules that work together but cover different stages. Medius Contract Management serves as a cloud-based repository for supplier agreements, and its own documentation states that 'when contract management is connected to accounts payable processes, organizations can validate supplier invoices against contract terms automatically'; however, this is invoice-level downstream validation, not upstream PO price blocking at the time of requisition creation. Medius Procurement separately claims that 'centralized and integrated sourcing and ordering processes ensure purchases go through approved suppliers at agreed prices' and that buyers will 'see the savings and benefits you negotiate materialize as people order from contracted suppliers at agreed rates, every time,' which suggests a mechanism for enforcing contracted pricing during the buying step. The deepest-documented price-enforcement mechanism across both modules, however, remains three-way matching: comparing the invoice against the PO and receipt after the fact, not blocking or flagging a PO line item at creation time when its price deviates from a loaded vendor rate card. No help-center or product documentation was found showing how contracted rates are ingested per supplier, how PO line-item prices are compared against those rates at the moment of PO creation, or what enforcement action (flag vs. hard block) fires on deviation.

This $250M tech company needs contracted pricing loaded against specific vendors so that PO line prices are automatically validated against the agreement, not just tracked. Precoro's approach assembles this capability from three intersecting mechanisms rather than a single dedicated rate-card module. First, the internal catalog stores approved items with fixed prices and SKUs; administrators can enable 'Restrict Catalog Items Editing' to lock the Price, Currency, and Unit fields so requesters cannot override contracted rates when adding catalog items to PRs or POs (from Precoro help.precoro.com/how-to-set-up-a-purchase-requisition-module). Second, the Contract Management module lets buyers link POs and invoices to a named contract, tracks total spent versus contract value, and highlights any contract with exceeded limits in red; the contract record stores the gross amount and validity period but does not natively encode per-item line-item rates that auto-populate PO prices (from help.precoro.com/how-to-manage-suppliers-contract). Third, a per-supplier Tolerance Rate enforces a percentage deviation threshold: if a supplier invoice or receipt price deviates from the PO net total beyond the set percentage, the document is flagged for matching review rather than auto-approved (from help.precoro.com/tolerance-rate-1). Together these mechanisms cover: catalog-enforced pricing at the requisition stage, contract spend tracking, and invoice-price deviation alerting. The gap for this buyer is that Precoro does not offer a dedicated rate-card object where contracted unit prices per SKU per supplier are loaded centrally and then automatically propagate to PO line items and validate against the agreement at order creation; the catalog price lock is the closest proxy, but it depends on the catalog being kept current and does not tie back to a structured contract pricing schedule the way a true rate-card engine would.

For a $250M technology company managing $90M in annual spend across 800+ active vendors and trying to enforce contracted pricing, Pleo offers no rate card or contracted price validation mechanism. Pleo's spend controls operate at the cardholder level: admins set per-purchase dollar caps and monthly card limits that decline transactions exceeding a threshold, but these thresholds are budget guardrails, not contract-price comparisons. The Vendor Cards feature (help.pleo.io) locks a virtual card to a specific merchant and applies a weekly, monthly, or yearly spend ceiling, but stores no contracted unit price and performs no line-item price check against a supplier agreement. Pleo's Beyond-plan Purchase Orders feature allows pre-approval of a purchase with at least one line item and then attempts to match an incoming invoice to the linked PO, surfacing a warning on mismatch — but the PO itself is manually authored by the requester, not validated against a pre-loaded rate card, so there is no automated mechanism to confirm that the price entered matches the negotiated contract rate.

This $250M technology company wants employees to browse pre-approved spend categories visually, without needing to know item names or SKUs upfront. Medius Procurement, the eProcurement module that sits alongside the core AP automation platform, addresses catalog discovery through two mechanisms. First, the eProcurement software allows users to find what they need using a sophisticated search feature: this is search-first, exactly what the buyer is trying to move beyond. Second, if users prefer browsing, punchouts to third-party catalogs allow them to add items to a shopping basket and enter them into the pre-designed approval process: this delivers a visual browse experience, but only for suppliers who have punchout-enabled storefronts. Medius Procurement brings automation to the entire procurement process, and the web-based purchase order system provides an intuitive consumer shopping experience to ensure employees can quickly and easily meet their needs from the right suppliers at the right prices: however, no documented evidence of a native visual category-tile homepage, hierarchical category tree, or marketplace-style browsing interface within the Medius UI itself was found. For internal services (professional services, facilities, marketing), which represent a significant portion of this buyer's $60M indirect spend, there is no documented category-based visual browse layer.

This $250M tech company needs employees across four US offices and a Canadian development center to browse pre-approved spend categories visually, without knowing item names or SKUs upfront. Precoro's internal catalog module allows admins to load approved items with images, prices, and SKUs, and items can be grouped using an 'Item Groups' feature and tagged with categories via a custom drop-down field. Precoro lets you 'organize supplier products into easy-to-use catalogs' and 'create catalogs of approved items with images, prices, and SKUs.' When an employee creates a purchase requisition or PO, they click a 'Catalog button' to open the item library and can narrow results using a 'Category filter' that 'enables you to quickly narrow down your search and locate items within specific categories' and a 'Group filter' that 'allows you to search for catalog items within specific item groups' — though these filters only display if categories and groups have been pre-assigned. Item images can be uploaded in PNG or JPEG formats for visualization purposes. For physical goods from select suppliers, Precoro lets users 'browse approved online stores via PunchOut catalogs' and keeps 'control over supplier selection and pricing,' with integrations documented for Amazon, Lowe's, Staples, and Grainger. However, there is no documented evidence of a visual category-tile homepage, hierarchical category tree with drill-down navigation, or marketplace-style storefront within Precoro's native internal catalog: the interface is a filterable list accessed from inside a document form, not a category-first browsing experience. For this buyer's indirect spend categories (IT, professional services, facilities, marketing, travel), PunchOut covers only physical-goods retailers, leaving the majority of their spend catalog without visual category navigation.

This $250M technology company needs a visual, pre-purchase catalog that routes employees to approved suppliers by spend category before any money is committed. Pleo has no such mechanism. In Pleo, categories automatically align with your chart of accounts and tax codes so expenses are ready for export and reconciliation: they are a post-transaction coding tool, not a pre-purchase browsing interface. When a Pleo card is used to make a purchase, the system automatically assigns it to a category based on the merchant, meaning the spend event must already have occurred before any category interaction happens. Pleo does offer a purchase order feature that allows purchases to be approved before they happen, but POs are created and reviewed as free-form documents, with no catalog, no category tile navigation, and no guided buying flow that would steer employees toward contracted suppliers.

For a 450-person technology company standardized on Okta, Medius (MediusFlow) has a verified listing in the Okta Integration Network that enables SAML 2.0-based SSO with Okta as the identity provider, alongside OIDC as an alternative protocol. The mechanism works as follows: an Okta admin configures Medius as a SAML 2.0 service provider application within the Okta Admin Console, exchanges metadata (ACS URL, entity ID, signing certificate) with the Medius platform, and Okta then issues signed SAML assertions on each login so users are authenticated without a separate Medius credential. Beyond login, the OIN listing documents user lifecycle provisioning features including Create (linking or creating Medius accounts on Okta assignment), Deactivate (removing access when offboarded from Okta), Group Push (syncing Okta groups into Medius), and Group Linking. SCIM-based automatic provisioning is also documented for the MediusFlow platform via a SCIM endpoint generated in the MediusFlow admin console, as confirmed by the Microsoft Entra provisioning tutorial that covers the same underlying platform. This authentication layer operates at the user-access stage and is upstream of all Medius AP workflow steps; Okta group assignments can map to Medius roles and company configurations, making the integration end-to-end compatible with the buyer's onboarding and offboarding lifecycle.

For a 450-person technology company running Okta as its identity provider, Precoro provides a dedicated, step-by-step Okta SSO setup guide in its help center, confirming Okta is an explicitly named and supported IdP. Precoro can integrate with any identity provider that supports the SAML 2.0 protocol, and Okta is called out by name with its own configuration article. The admin opens Okta, creates a new SAML App Integration, then maps Precoro's SSO configuration tab fields: Single Sign-On URL to Assertion Consumer Service (ACS), and Audience URI (SP Entity ID) to Entity ID. Assertion Encryption is set to Encrypted, the Precoro Certificate is uploaded into both the Encryption Certificate and Signature Certificate fields in Okta, and Single Logout is enabled. Once configured, users log in with one click via the Okta tile and are redirected to the Precoro main dashboard. Administrators can also enforce SSO-only access: Google Sign-In can be disabled in Configuration, prompting all users to authenticate via SSO; this setting is visible once at least one company in the account has SSO enabled.

For this 450-person technology company running Okta as its identity provider, Pleo supports SAML 2.0 SSO with Okta as a named, first-class integration. Setup proceeds through Pleo's Settings > Integrations > SAML Single Sign-On module: the buyer's IT team creates a new Pleo app in Okta with the NameId configured as EmailAddress, then shares the SSO URL, issuer, and certificate with Pleo, after which Pleo completes configuration within 1-2 business days. SAML SSO allows access to Pleo through the organisation's identity provider; admins navigate to Settings, select Integrations, click SAML Single Sign-On, and select Okta or a custom SAML 2.0 provider. Beyond login, user provisioning through SCIM is available on Advanced plans and connects Okta to Pleo to automatically create or link user profiles when assigning the Pleo app to a user in Okta. Automated deprovisioning is also covered: users are deactivated in Pleo when the Pleo app is unassigned in SCIM or the SCIM account is deactivated. Both SAML SSO and SCIM are gated to Pleo's Advanced plan tier.