Looking at moving our F&B procurement from BirchStreet to Coupa to tighten landed-cost control without bruising key distributor relationships. Two properties, about 1,200 lines/month; BirchStreet’s price audit caught a 3.4% overbill in Q4, but Coupa’s sourcing events look strong for seasonal produce. If you’ve run Coupa with 3-way match against multi-DC broadliners, did it keep contract compliance clean and service levels steady?
@OP when we set up Coupa “3-way match” with a multi-DC broadliner, mapping each DC as a supplier location and tying price lists to ship-to — then requiring the cXML invoice to include the DC code — killed the phantom price variances and tightened landed cost without rattling the rep. Caveat: add a 1–2% tolerance on catch‑weight/seasonal produce or you’ll drown in exceptions.
We ran Coupa 3-way with Sysco across four DCs; the biggest win was enabling GTIN + pack/UOM normalization in the item master and requiring cXML to pass SupplierPartAuxID so subs didn’t sneak through. For landed cost, we mapped fuel/harvest fees as line-level “additional charges” on the PO and set contract items to 0% price tolerance — otherwise the BirchStreet-style audit effect isn’t there unless you run variance reports. Small caveat: seasonal events worked, but @OP we had to pre-commit volume with the broadliner to keep allocations, or they’d reroute to another DC like avocado Tetris.
But @josh_martin85 nailed the item master side; the other lever for us was turning on catch‑weight receiving and setting per‑category tolerances (±2% proteins, ±5% produce) while coding fuel/small‑order fees as non‑merch so they don’t trip mismatches. Tiny caveat: we added a weekly “subs review” with the broadliner rep to pre‑approve swaps — like weighing the steak before arguing the bill; want my quick setup notes?