PatternCleaning & soft FM

Nobody chose 30 toilet paper suppliers.

They just couldn’t see them. One cleaning business, twelve months of invoices, and a simple question nobody could answer: what do we spend on toilet paper?

Each tile is a supplier that invoiced for toilet paperthe three worth keeping
This case is built on a pattern we see again and again in soft FM procurement.
Before

The spend is there. The picture isn’t.

What we hear from cleaning businesses, before any data changes hands.

Invoices arrive as PDFs

Line detail sits inside documents nobody re-reads. The ERP holds supplier totals, not what was bought.

Every site orders its own way

Site managers buy consumables locally. One product enters the books under twenty descriptions.

One person runs procurement

There is time to keep sites supplied. There is no time to benchmark prices or question what comes in.

Client reports built by hand

Each month, numbers pulled from an audit tool, a supplier portal, and email. Every client wants a different cut.

Once every line is classified

One product. 30 suppliers. Now side by side.

Classified, the pattern was visible in days: every supplier, what each charged per roll, and on what terms. Which three to keep is your call. The table makes it an easy one.

The decisionBunzl CHS · contracted core supplyGompels · bulk price leaderPattersons · regional next-day cover
Supplier£ / rollTermsDelivery
Gompels£0.31Account, 30 daysNational, 2 to 3 days
Bunzl CHS£0.33Contracted, one invoiceNational, scheduled
Pattersons£0.38Account, 30 daysRegional, next day
Amazon Business£0.41Spot, no termsNext day, per parcel
4 of 30 shown · Standard 2-ply
And then

What else shows up when every line is classified

Off-contract buying

Contracted · Bunzl£19.20 case of 36 rolls
Actually paid · Amazon£26.80 same case, +40%

A cost risk and a compliance risk. Client contracts specify products and suppliers, and every off-contract line weakens your position at renegotiation.

Same roll, five prices

Tork Advanced T4, price paid per roll
Supplier A
£0.31
Supplier B
£0.36
Supplier C
£0.41
Supplier D
£0.47
Supplier E
£0.52

68% spread on one product. Each price sits on a different invoice under a different description.

Spend you can’t see

24% of spend uncategorised. You can’t benchmark it, negotiate it, or report on it until it has a label.

From invoices in any format to a table you can act on

PDF invoices
ERP exports
Ordering portals
Excel sheets
pearstop.1 · Clean
2 · Classify
3 · Enrich
What you spend, per product
Off-contract and outlier lines
Suppliers per category, side by side

Your data doesn't need to be clean

Messy data is the starting point. Cleaning and classifying it is the product.

AI-first, human reviewed

Every label checked. Classification holds up as new suppliers and invoices arrive.

Usage-based pricing

You pay for the lines processed. No heavy annual subscription.

Typical result in soft FM10–20%

savings on addressable spend. The findings above are where it comes from.

“It would have taken five engineers and a full year to clean this up. So we decided to look for a better solution.”
Head of Operations, Cleaning services company

See this on your own invoices

Send up to 200 invoice lines or ten invoices. We send them back labelled, so you can see the same kind of pattern in your own numbers.

Send us a sample

Send a representative sample of your invoice lines — up to 200 lines, or a handful of invoices (max 10) — and we'll classify them to show you exactly how it works. No cost, no commitment.

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