document-a-purchase-decision

name	document-a-purchase-decision
category	write
description	Record a purchasing decision with alternatives, evidence, authority, and follow-up conditions. Use when a team needs a durable rationale for an award, renewal, exception, or no-buy decision.

document-a-purchase-decision

Procedure

1. Identify the decision, date, authority, participants, declared conflicts, and governing process.
2. Restate the need, scope, constraints, and mandatory requirements.
3. List viable options, including no purchase, extension, internal delivery, or phased action.
4. Summarize evaluation evidence, cost basis, risks, exceptions, and unresolved uncertainty.
5. Explain the selected option and why alternatives were rejected without inventing certainty.
6. Record conditions, approvals, dependencies, review dates, and implementation owners.
7. Link source artifacts while applying access and retention controls.
8. Obtain approval and preserve the decision as a versioned record.

Guardrails

• Do not rewrite history after the outcome is known.
• Separate evaluator judgment, verified fact, supplier claim, and assumption.
• Exclude unnecessary personal, confidential, and legally privileged detail.

Done

• A decision record traces the outcome to options, evidence, risks, and authority
• Conditions, exceptions, owners, and review triggers are explicit
• Approval and links to controlled source records are preserved