purchasing

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of purchase.

   The company is purchasing new equipment for the lab.

   Purchasing in bulk reduced their monthly costs.

   Note

   One spelling does two verb jobs here: the participle after be (is purchasing new equipment) and the gerund that heads a phrase (purchasing in bulk). The gerund still acts like a verb and takes a direct object. By contrast, the noun for buying takes of and can be pluralized as purchasings. Every meaning of the verb carries over, including obtaining something through labor or sacrifice and moving a load by mechanical advantage.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The action or process by which someone buys goods or services.

   Centralized purchasing helped the chain negotiate lower prices.

   The purchasing of raw materials accounts for most of the factory's expenses.

   Similarbuying, procurement, acquisition

   Oppositeselling

   Note

   Usually a mass noun for buying in general, it can also count separate acts of buying, and then it takes a plural. James Arthur Fulton's Our Economic Nationalism (1936) speaks of debtor nations increasing "their purchasings from us", meaning buying added up country by country. The preposition to watch is from: purchasings from a nation or supplier, just like purchases from one.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The organized, multi-step process large organizations use to obtain goods, covering identifying needs, approvals, supplier management, negotiation, receipt of goods, and payment.

   Their purchasing involves multiple approval steps before any supplier is paid.

   Streamlining purchasing across departments cut the agency's costs significantly.

   Similarprocurement, buying, sourcing

   Note

   In business and government the word stretches well past the moment of paying. Payment comes last, after someone has decided what is needed, secured approval and chosen whom to buy from. That is why organizations speak of centralizing or streamlining purchasing, as a system to be designed rather than a single act. It sits close to procurement, and the department takes its name from this process.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The department within an organization responsible for managing how goods and services are bought.

   Purchasing rejected the supplier's bid as too expensive.

   After college she joined the company's purchasing as an assistant buyer.

   Similarprocurement

Showing meanings only. Show all 4