Methodology
The benchmark is only worth having if no member, supplier or operator can bend it or trace it. So the rules are fixed, written down here, versioned, and enforced in software with no override path. Members see the methodology line with every number.
A cell is one part in one quantity band over one period: for example “stretch film, 18 in × 1,500 ft, 80 gauge, bought 10–99 rolls at a time, over the trailing window”. Everything ProcureStats publishes is a statistic of a cell: the 25th percentile, median and 75th percentile of what members paid, and a mean after outliers are removed. Nothing else leaves the pool.
Purchase-order lines from members’ own systems — a CSV export or a read-only connection. Not surveys, not list prices, not scraped catalogues. Each line is normalized to a comparable unit price: quantities and units of measure reconciled, currencies converted, freight, tax and service lines removed. Part numbers are resolved to one part key in a fixed order of trust — a national distributor’s catalogue number first, then a validated manufacturer part number, then the supplier’s own SKU. Lines that cannot be matched with confidence do not feed any cell. Every exclusion is counted by reason, so a member can always ask why a line is missing.
Public reference data (for example U.S. government or municipal award prices) may appear to members as a clearly labelled reference series. It never counts toward the floor and is never mixed into a member cell.
A cell publishes only if it passes all of the following. Otherwise it shows as “insufficient data” and nothing about it is displayed.
Repeated releases against the same blanket order or contract collapse to one observation, so a member who buys weekly does not outweigh one who buys quarterly.
Prices more than three scaled median absolute deviations from the cell median, on a log scale, are dropped before anything is computed. Data-entry errors and one-off emergency buys do not move the benchmark.
The surviving observations must come from a minimum number of independent member companies, and there must be a minimum number of them. The floor is part of the versioned methodology, shown to members with every number, and only ever rises.
No single member may account for more than 40% of a cell’s observations. A cell one buyer dominates stays dark, however many others are in it.
Nothing fresher than six months is ever published, and cells are computed over a trailing 24-month window. Benchmarks inform a negotiation; they never signal live pricing.
ProcureStats is buy-side only. Suppliers cannot join, subscribe, or buy a report, and there is no sell-side product. Membership requires a signed agreement that binds both sides: members contribute their purchasing history under these rules, and we publish only statistics that pass the test above. Operators can withhold a cell; they cannot publish one that fails.
The rules above are methodology v1 (2026-09-02). Any change to a threshold is a
new version, announced to members before it takes effect, and every published number
carries the version it was computed under.