Hosted Catalogue

With a hosted catalogue, the supplier provides a file of items, descriptions, prices and units of measure that is imported and maintained inside the buyer's e-procurement platform. Buyers search and select products locally, which gives fast, consistent ordering and full control over how items appear. The trade-off is that the data must be refreshed whenever prices or ranges change.

Hosted catalogues suit stable ranges with predictable pricing, where the overhead of periodic uploads is manageable. They contrast with punchout catalogues, where the buyer connects out to the supplier's own storefront to see live, complete ranges. Many organisations use a mix — hosting core contracted items while punching out for large or frequently changing catalogues.