Catalogs in Sourcing and Procurement
A procurement catalog is a structured collection of pre-approved goods and services available for employees and purchasers to select when creating purchase requisitions. Catalogs act as a controlled "internal store," ensuring that buying activity is guided toward approved items, suppliers, and pricing conditions — reducing maverick spending and simplifying the requisitioning process.
In SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, catalogs come in two types: internal catalogs and external (punchout) catalogs.
Internal Catalog
An internal catalog is a catalog that is hosted and managed within your SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition system. The catalog content — item descriptions, prices, material groups, suppliers, and validity dates — is maintained directly by your organization, typically by purchasers using the Manage Catalog Items Fiori app.
Key characteristics:
- Content is owned and controlled by your organization.
- Items reflect your negotiated prices and preferred suppliers
- Supports guided buying for employees during self-service requisitioning
- Items are searchable directly within the My Purchase Requisitions app
- Requires the Purchaser role (SAP_BR_PURCHASER) to manage
Typical use cases are indirect materials and services with pre-negotiated conditions — for example, office supplies, IT equipment, or standard spare parts.
By design, in S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, the internal catalog does not display like a traditional punchout/external catalog, where you can open it and browse a list of items.
In the My Purchase Requisitions app, the internal catalog is surfaced through the cross-catalog search bar, not as a browsable catalog tile. This means employees are expected to type a search term (or use * as a wildcard) in the search bar to retrieve internal catalog items — rather than clicking on a catalog and seeing a product list.
External Catalog (Punchout Catalog)
An external catalog is a catalog that is hosted and maintained by the supplier — for example, on a supplier's e-commerce website, Amazon Business, or the SAP Business Network. Users access it through a punchout process: they are redirected from the SAP system to the supplier's online store, browse and select items, and the selected items are automatically transferred back into SAP to create a purchase requisition.
Key characteristics:
- Content is owned and controlled by the supplier
- Prices and availability are real-time, directly from the supplier's platform
- Configured via the Manage Shopping Sites app in SAP Ariba Buying (Base Edition)
- Requires integration between SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP Ariba Buying
- Once items are returned from the external site, the standard requisition, approval, and PO process applies in S/4HANA
Typical use cases are broad or highly variable product ranges where supplier-managed, real-time content is more practical than maintaining items internally — for example, technical components, configurable products, or marketplace purchasing.
Both catalog types feed into the same downstream procurement process: once items are added to a requisition, the standard approval workflow, purchase order creation, and goods receipt/invoice verification process applies in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.
Manage Catalog Items
As a purchaser, using the Manage Catalog Items app you can maintain or manage catalog items in a catalog, using filter criteria such as editing status, item, material group, and supplier. You can create, edit, or delete catalog items belonging to a catalog.
Catalog items in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition streamline the procurement process by giving employees a pre-approved, structured selection of goods and services. Managed by purchasers through the Manage Catalog Items Fiori app, they connect directly to the requisitioning workflow — reducing manual effort and improving procurement compliance.