Preparing Requsitions
- How do I obtain materials or services
from vendors?
A: Visit the Procurement Step-by-Step Buying Guide page.
- What is the average turn-around time for a procurement to be placed once it is approved in ePro? Does it vary for P-Card vs. purchase orders?
A: Requisitions made into PCard orders are placed in approximately one day. Requisitions made into regular purchase orders/subcontracts are placed within 1-30 days--depending on the dollar amount and complexity of the purchase. The Leadtime Chart (pdf) shows times required to process different kinds of purchase transactions.
- What happens if the amount of a procurement is higher than the authorized requisition amount?
A: Any substantive changes, such as making a substitution, competing a potential sole source, modifying specifications, significantly increasing the cost or price of an order, or extending the due date, must be discussed with the Requester prior to proceeding with the change. Once the Buyer and Requester agree on what they want to do, one of them should contact the Approver and ask that a re-approval email be sent to the Buyer. (The Requisition Preparer should also be kept in the loop through email CCs).
A: When a requisition is "Saved and Submitted" by a Requisition Preparer in ePro, the process is the same for all requisitions. An email approval request is sent to the Amount Approver (Authorized Signer) entered in the requisition and to other approvers, if necessary (EH&S if gas or bio-toxins and Ops Director if over $500K). Once the requisition is approved, a Procurement supervisor assigns it to a buyer and the buyer will place the order with an appropriate vendor using either PCard (if <$25K, not a Restricted Item, and the vendor accepts it) or a regular purchase order.
- What is required in order for an approver who is offsite to be able to
approve an ePro requisition?
A: For security reasons, the ePro approval system is behind the Lab's firewall and you need to be on LBLnet to be able to approve requisitions. There are a couple of options for approving ePro requisitions from offsite locations:
- Obtain an LBNL Virtual Private Network (VPN) account to connect to the Lab if you have a cable modem, DSL connection, or other dial-up service like AOL or MSN. Here you remain connected using your Internet Service Provider but launch a VPN program on your PC when you want to tunnel your Internet traffic (like ePro) through LBLnet.
- Leave your LBNL office PC on and establish a Remote Desktop Connection with it from your home PC.
- If you need something approved right-away, the Requisition Preparer can go into ePro's "Edit Defaults" screen and select another Authorized Signer in your division.
A: When there are multiple project ids (accounts) the requisition is approved by the one approver entered into the ePro requisition. This may be any Authorized Signer at the Lab who has sufficient dollar authority to cover the amount of the requisition. If multiple divisions are involved, the approver should be made aware of this before submitting the requisition for approval so the approver can get an approval consensus from all divisions involved.
A: For "rush" requisitions, put the word "RUSH" in line 1's "Comments" field.
A: It is advantageous to establish a blanket order (extended term subcontract) when there will be many requests for materials or services from the same vendor over an extended period of time (typically 1 year or more). The vendor must also agree to a reasonable pricing mechanism to cover the entire blanket order period. B2B System Contracts are an example of a blanket order that covers many requests for materials. Here is a complete list of LBNL blanket orders (xls).
A: When a vendor is unable to fill an order by the requisition's due date, the buyer will inform the Requester of the quoted due date. The Requester may then give the buyer authorization to proceed with the purchase with the new due date.
- How do I renew a subcontract that will expire?
A: See the Subcontract Renewal FAQ.