Spend Lens in SureStock: Understanding Your Purchasing Data

Spend Lens takes the last 12 months of your purchase orders and answers four questions:

You'll find it under Reports → Spend Lens.

Spend Lens analyzes the purchase order data already in SureStock. To see meaningful results, your account needs purchasing history, either created directly in SureStock or synced from your connected FSM or accounting software.

If Spend Lens looks empty or sparse, the most common reason is that there isn't enough PO history in the analysis window yet.

These three rules explain almost every question about Spend Lens.

1. Spend is dated when the cost becomes final

A purchase order is counted in the month its cost is finalized at reconciliation, not the month you created it.

Example. You create a PO on March 28, receive the material on April 2, and reconcile it on April 5. That spend shows up in April, not March.That's why a PO can seem to "move" from one month to another: it moved when you reconciled it.

2. The window is a rolling 12 months

Spend Lens always looks at the last 12 months from your most recent purchasing activity. It's not a calendar year or your fiscal year. The date range is shown at the top of the page, for example:

3. Numbers refresh overnight

Spend Lens recalculates every night. New purchasing activity gets included, and the 12-month window rolls forward by a day, so the oldest day drops off.

This means your totals will look slightly different tomorrow than they do today, even if you don't create a single PO. That's expected.

In the top right corner you can switch between two modes. Both use the same data, they just present it differently.

Screen 1: Spend Baseline
​"Where is the money going?"

The opening picture. Three numbers:

Example. Over the last 12 months, your business spent $15,628 across 10 purchase orders to 2 suppliers.

Screen 2: Supplier Concentration
​"How concentrated is it?"

This screen ranks your top suppliers by spend and shows each one's share: that supplier's spend divided by your total spend.

Example. One supplier accounts for $9,857 of $15,628 in total spend, so their share is 63.1%.

Read the PO count alongside the share. Two suppliers with similar spend can represent very different buying patterns.

Example.
Top supplier: 5 POs, $9,857 (63.1% share), about $1,970 per order.
Second supplier: 1 PO, $5,771 (36.9% share), all in a single order.

The first is steady, recurring purchasing. The second is one large order, so its share could drop quickly if that order doesn't repeat.

At the bottom of this screen, a warning shows how many materials came from a single supplier with 3 or more line items over the 12-month window. The next screen goes into those.

Screen 3: Single-Source SKUs
​"Which materials come from only one supplier?"

A list of materials you bought from exactly one supplier in the last 90 days, ranked by 90-day spend so the biggest dollars appear first.

This is useful for planning: if one of these items is backordered, you'll know ahead of time which materials don't have an alternative set up in your catalog.

Example. A T-hinge with $2,738 in 90-day spend sits above a galvanized tee with $433 from the same supplier. Start at the top.

Tip: look at the supplier column, not just the material column. Eight single-sourced materials that all come from two suppliers usually means two conversations, not eight.

This screen is informational only. SureStock doesn't request quotes or change suppliers automatically.

Screen 4: Price Increases
​"Where are your prices climbing?"

This screen ranks materials by 90-day price impact, the most important concept in Spend Lens.

Price impact isn't the percentage increase. It's the price change multiplied by how much you actually bought.

Example. Material A went up 40%, but you bought two: impact is a few dollars. Material B went up 6%, and you bought 4,000: impact is thousands. Material B belongs at the top of your list.

Below the table, a price history chart plots the selected material over time. Dotted lines mark the recent 90-day average and the prior 90-day average, and each point is color-coded by supplier.

The four summary cards

📌 Comparison opportunities doesn't have its own screen in Demo mode. Each one is a material you already buy from more than one supplier at noticeably different prices, so it's a quick way to spot pricing worth a second look.

Supplier share and Monthly PO spend

The donut shows how spend is distributed across suppliers. The bar chart shows total PO spend by month.

Use the monthly chart to spot outliers. A month that towers over the rest usually means a seasonal buy, a large one-time project, or a data issue.

Example. If eleven months average around $65,000 and one shows $548,000, open that month in the export and check which supplier drove it. Often it's a single large order.

PO List tab

The full table of purchase orders: date, PO number, supplier, line count, PO total, status, and cycle time.

You can filter by supplier, search by PO number, item number, or material, and export the results.

Material breakdown tab

This tab switches the view from purchase orders to materials, comparing the prior 90 days against the recent 90 days:

Decreases show here too, with a negative impact. A material that dropped 22% shows up as money you didn't spend.

The "Data entry fixes" panel

At the bottom of Material breakdown, a highlighted panel lists materials excluded from the price comparison because their pricing looks like a unit-of-measure mistake.

This happens when the same material is entered once per piece and once per box. SureStock sees the same item number go from $1.10 to $95.55 and sets it aside instead of reporting a fake 8,000% jump.

Example. A fitting listed at $1.10 – $95.55, spread 8,586% almost certainly has one line priced per box and the rest per piece.

Fix the unit on those lines and the material rejoins the comparison on the next nightly refresh. If a large share of materials are flagged, cleaning them up will noticeably improve everything Spend Lens shows you.

The Export button in Explore mode downloads an Excel workbook with six sheets, from summary to detail:

The export also includes PO Creator, Job Number, Job Name, Ship To, Ship To Type (warehouse, jobsite, or truck), PO Received At, and, if your business uses ServiceTitan, the ServiceTitan PO#.

What the export gives you that the dashboard doesn't

The Suppliers sheet adds:

Example. A supplier can be your #2 by annual spend and still have nearly stopped: $139,866 for the year, but only $27 in the last 90 days vs. $3,733 in the prior 90.

The Monthly Trend sheet adds average PO cost, handy for spotting a shift from many small orders to a few large ones.

The Purchase Orders sheet shows the full cost build-up: Materials Subtotal + Additional Charges + Other Charges = PO Total. Other Charges can be negative when a credit or discount applies.

Three things to expect in the export

📌 Note: Spend Lens refreshes overnight, so the export reflects data as of the last refresh. If you need today's POs, use the Export menu on the Purchase Orders list instead.

Spend Lens is only as good as the purchasing data behind it. Three issues cause most confusing results:

None of these are Spend Lens problems, they're catalog and data entry issues that Spend Lens brings to the surface. Fixing them improves your reporting on the next nightly refresh.

Why did my numbers change since yesterday?
Spend Lens recalculates nightly, and the 12-month window rolls forward each day.

Why does my export total differ from the dashboard?
The export includes all PO statuses, including drafts and canceled orders. Filter the PO Status column to compare.

Why does one material show a huge price increase?
Almost always a unit-of-measure issue. Check the Data entry fixes panel at the bottom of Material breakdown.

Why do the two "single-source" counts differ?
Screen 3 in Demo mode looks at the last 90 days. The Explore card looks at 12 months and requires 3+ line items.

Who is the unknown supplier in my results?
POs without a supplier assigned. Assign them and that spend will be redistributed.

Why is a supplier's trend percentage blank?
The prior period was zero, the change was over 500%, or there was no activity 91 to 180 days back. See the Notes sheet in your export.

A PO moved to a different month. Why?
Spend is dated at reconciliation, so it lands in the month the cost was finalized..

Can I export the Single-source SKUs or Comparison opportunities lists?
Not yet. The export covers purchase order and supplier data; those material-level lists are available on screen.

Inventory Lens in SureStock shows what's sitting in your warehouses and trucks after you buy it: value, turns, and count accuracy.