Methods and systems to maintain, check, report, and audit contract and historical pricing in electronic procurement

A method for auditing purchases in an electronic marketplace, comprising:

• receiving, from an administrative end-user associated with a purchasing organization, an audit configuration based upon the administrative end-user:
• selecting a set of items from a server-side electronic supplier catalog and setting an item identifier and a baseline price to be associated with each of said set of items;
• defining a tolerance value for said baseline price comprising an acceptable price deviation from said baseline price;
• and
• creating at least one mapping template of a set of information, received from an external electronic supplier catalog, to a set of contract fields associated with said purchasing organization wherein said contract fields include a supplier item identifier and a contract price;
• launching an audit on said set of items originally baselined from the server-side electronic supplier catalog against an external client-side search of at least one electronic supplier catalog;
• receiving, from said external client-side search, a set of information that may be utilized by said system to display and purchase items from said external electronic supplier catalog;
• mapping said set of information using said mapping template;
• determining a real-time price for at least one item of said set of items based upon said external client-side search;
• and
• generating an analysis for a set of purchases, made by one or more purchasing end-users, through the electronic marketplace for a defined period of time which identifies:
• any suppliers whose prices match said baseline price for that item;
• any price differences, between said real-time price and said baseline price, for each of said items audited;
• and
• whether said real-time price is within the tolerance value of said baseline price.

A system for auditing purchases in an electronic marketplace, comprising:

• a storage memory configured to store:
• a set of items from a server-side electronic supplier catalog, each item comprising an item identifier and a baseline price;
• a tolerance value for said baseline price comprising an acceptable price deviation from said baseline price;
• and
• a mapping template that associates a set of information received from an external client-side search of an external electronic supplier catalog with a set of contract fields, the set of contract fields comprising a supplier item identifier and a contract price;
• and
• a means for generating an audit analysis for a set of purchases made by a purchasing end user based upon the mapping template, the set of items, and the set of information.