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ePro/SciQuest Stages
by Susan Campbell
The ePro/SciQuest project team held an extensive fit-gap session last Thursday, September 2, to once again examine the latest revisions and identify the remaining needs for the eProcurement workflow.
The latest (and much closer to final) ePro workflow is comprised of five stages:
- Department and Project Approval - once a requisition is submitted, it must be approved by the department or project manager responsible for the budget.
- Agency Fund Approval - in this stage, a centralized Agency Fund Approver will receive a notification for approving a requisition.
- Amount Approval - this stage only applies to the truly online requests, meaning those requests that can flow through the complete online shopping system (where the vendor has the capability to receive, process, and invoice completely online). In this stage, if a request is $10,000 or more, then it must receive approval before the online order is completed.
- Special Category Approval - this stage will only be activated when a special approval is necessary, such as for the purchase of IT equipment or hazardous chemicals, which would require the approval of ITS or EHS.
- Buyer Approval - this stage will only apply for non-online requests, for those vendors that cannot process orders completely online. Because the order cannot be processed online via the ePro/SciQuest shopping system, the order will require a Buyer’s intervention to ensure that a purchase order is created and that the order is properly delivered (usually by Fax) to the vendor.
Typically, not all of these stages would be activated for a single requisition – the Department and Project Approval stage will always be activated, but the remaining stages would take effect only when needed, depending upon the item(s) being purchased and the capability of the vendor to process online orders.
In addition to the five stages, there are some extra notifications built into the system. For example, an approver would be notified when they have items in ePro which need approval, and they would also receive a follow-up notification if approvals had not been completed after three days. After four days, an ePro Administrator would then receive notification, and would be able to reassign the approval. To prevent these late notifications and reassignments, though, there is also a feature to assign an alternate approver, should a primary approver be out-of-the-office for an extended time period.
This is, of course, a very high-level overview of the process – there are many things occurring behind the scenes, such as proper routing and assignments based on a user’s security profile. The ePro/SciQuest team is working diligently, though, to resolve those behind-the-scenes issues so that the purchasing process can remain as basic and logical as a purchase from Amazon.com.
The stages mentioned above will be available soon in the test database, and pilot departments at KSU will soon be able to see and test “live” examples. The ePro/SciQuest team would like to thank the five pilot departments at KSU: 1) Bagwell College of Education – Department of Elementary and Early Childhood Education; 2) College of the Arts – Department of Theatre, Performance Studies & Dance; 3) Continuing Education; 4) Facilities; and 5) Student Recreation and Wellness Center.
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