Managing cost data based on community supplier and commodity information

A system comprising:

• one or more processors;
• a memory storing instructions which, when executed by the one or more processors, cause performance of:
• storing, in one or more data repositories, transactional data relating to past transactions involving a plurality of commodities between a plurality of buyer entities and a plurality of supplier entities;
• calculating metric data of one or more overages from the transactional data, wherein each of the one or more overages indicates an amount to which a cost of a commodity item as specified in an invoice exceeds a cost of the commodity item as specified in a requisition, the invoice being generated in response to the requisition, the calculating of metric data further including determining, for the commodity item, an average overage amount at least in part by aggregating a plurality of overages from transactions between the plurality of buyer entities and the plurality of supplier entities, the metric data identifying trends related to overages within a community and indicating an estimate of overages associated with the commodity item;
• receiving, from a computer associated with a buyer entity, a request to generate a requisition for one or more commodity items, the one or more commodity items including the commodity item;
• identifying, from the request, a supplier identification (ID) associated with a supplier entity of the plurality of supplier entities and a commodity ID associated with the commodity item;
• calculating a projected total cost for the commodity item from the metric data using the supplier ID or the commodity ID, the projected total cost indicating a probable cost for the commodity item based on previous transactions that included the particular commodity item and being based on the metric data of one or more overages related to the supplier entity and the commodity item;
• in response to determining that the projected total cost for the particular commodity item is less than a threshold value, automatically approving the requisition and transmitting an approval of ordering the particular commodity item the requisition to the computer associated with the buyer entity, wherein the threshold value is set via one or more interactions with a graphical user interface (GUI);
• in response to determining that the projected total cost for the particular commodity item is greater than or equal to the threshold value, selecting and alerting an approval group of one or more approvers that are required to approve the requisition for a buyer account of the buyer entity, the approval group being selected by a server and comprising one or more buyer accounts associated with the one or more approvers that are required to approve the requisition before a purchase order is created based on the requisition, the approval group being selected based on at least projected total cost and historical spend data of the buyer account of the buyer entity requesting the requisition;
• and
• in response to determining that the projected total cost for the commodity item is greater than or equal to the threshold value:
• generating and causing displaying, at the computer associated with the buyer entity, a GUI that includes a visible representation of the projected total cost in comparison with a visible representation of a cost of the commodity item, a list of approvers that are required to approve the requisition and an explanation for why the request was not automatically approved, and one or more selectable options, the one or more selectable options for selecting an alternate supplier from among one or more alternative suppliers, the visible representation of the one or more selectable options indicating, for each of the one or more alternative suppliers, whether a selection of the alternate supplier enables the requisition to automatically pass an internal approval criterion, wherein a determination as to whether each of the one or more alternate suppliers enables the requisition to automatically pass an internal approval criterion is based on the metric data;
• receiving input through the GUI of a particular selectable option of the one or more selectable options that specifies an alternative supplier entity of the one or more alternative suppliers;
• creating and transmitting a second purchase order to a computer associated with the alternative supplier entity;
• in response to receiving a second invoice that corresponds to the second purchase order, automatically approving the second invoice for payment;
• and
• automatically transmitting a payment of the second invoice based on the automatic approval of the second invoice;
• wherein at least the automatic approval of the requisition, the automatic approval of the second invoice, and the automatic transmitting of the payment of the second invoice are configured to reduce network resources and computational cycles associated with maintaining data integrity and security associated with the buyer entity, the supplier entity, and the alternative supplier entity;
• and
• wherein use of the projected total cost in the determining that the projected total cost for the commodity item is less than the threshold value and the determining that the projected total cost for the commodity item is greater than or equal to the threshold value is configured to conserve compute resources.