Most CFOs ask it. Almost no one can answer cleanly — because the business raises the PO and the contract field gets left blank. It's one of the clearest signals of control, and one input to your Spend Control Score.
You can hold every contract in the ERP and still not know what share of spend sits under one — when the reference field is blank, spend and contract never join up. A data-entry and behaviour gap a system upgrade doesn't close.
More than one "on contract / off contract" number — every dollar in one of three buckets:
Illustrative — your first scorecard shows your own numbers.
Contract use is one of the clearest control signals, but not the only one — buying process, supplier set-up and data quality all move the score. And the picture drifts: new unlinked POs every cycle. Organisations that stay in control rebuild this each period — from exports you already pull.