This article is designed to help you understand the key functionalities of Procurement Requests within Spendesk and how you can efficiently manage your procurement processes.
What are Procurement Requests?
Requests is the primary landing page to view and manage all your procurement requests - both New Purchases as well as Renewals. Procurement request are customizable and collaborative purchases requests that can lead to the creation of a Spendesk Purchase Order or/and the storage of the contract (with the Contract File and all the main informations about Renewal).
Where do I find Procurement Requests?
You can find the Procurement Requests in the Procurement/Request section.
How do Requests work?
View Requests
The default table view is your In Progress Requests and the filters are set to:
Status: [in progress]
You can edit those filters, but as soon as you refresh the page, the view will reset to the default.
This is because the default view is managed by Spendesk Procurement.
The other default view are: approved, rejected, on hold,, my requests .
You can also Start New Request using the purple button in the top-right of the table.
View Request Details
When you click into a specific Request, you'll be able to see all the details of that request
There are 7 sections in a request:
Request Form - The Request Form submitted by the requester. Requester can edit it at anytime.
Workflow Viewer - shows the workflow outline; you can move and zoom in/out, as well as click on any step to see that step's details
Comments - any comments people have made on the workflow
Documents - any attached documents; document properties include:
Document Name
Document Type
Document Status (Draft or Final)?
Assignee/Uploaded By
Purchase Details - See Purchase Order and Agreement Details
Vendor Details - Vendor profile with Details and Vendor Contacts
Saving Details - Negotiation Steps and Saving Performance
Track every request change through Request Audit Trail
Every request fields can be edited in a procurement request. To follow these changes, you can use the audit trail to track every field value updates, every task status update and every assignee updates.
If a cost center is changed or an amount is increased, it could restart some approval tasks and it will be logged in the audit trail.
You can access request audit trail, behind the three dots at the top-right of the request page
You can follow every field value update, task status update or assignee update in the audit trail
Create Approved Purchase Order with line items from Procurement Request
Clearly lay out purchase order requests for individual expenses and items such as supplies or inventory. Add as many line items as you like on a single request. Streamline your purchase order approval and creation by adding it into your procurement approval workflow.
Create approved purchase order with line items
If a “Purchase Outcome” task has been added in the procurement approval workflow configuration, a new “Purchase Outcome” task will appear at the end of the procurement request.
If you want to automatically create an approved purchase order at the end of a procurement request, add “Purchase Outcome” in your procurement approval workflow configuration
In this “Purchase Outcome” task, if the selected Request Payment Method is “Purchase Order”, task assignee will be able to add as many line items as possible. These line items will be added to the approved PO.
Task assignee will be able to split purchase order in several line items that will be added to the approved PO
Approved PO with line items created from procurement request
Create Purchase Order Line Items at the request level
New feature in Beta
As a requester, fill in the required questions on the form. You'll need to select the frequency (one-time or recurring), add service start/end dates, and the line items for the request. You’ll now be able to see the quote side-by-side with your request form when answering the required questions.
Upload a contract or quote for automated intake
New AI Feature in Beta
You can upload a contract or quote and Spendesk AI will auto-fill the Frequency, Start/end date, and Line items. You can also manually fill everything out or edit any fields.
Generate Purchase Order or Virtual Card from a Procurement Request
To create Virtual Card from Procurement Request, this should be activated by your procurement manager in the process settings
Generate a Purchase Order or a Virtual Card (single use or subscription) at the end of a procurement request, by selecting the appropriate Payment Method : Purchase Order or Virtual Card, reviewing and filling the Purchase Outcome form and click on "Finalize Purchase Outcome" to create your Purchase Order or Virtual Card in Spendesk Core.
You can see the generated card by clicking on "See card request" (if your procurement manager has set an additional approval workflow on card generation, you'll need to wait for the card approval workflow to be complete to generate your card)
