Exploring Catalog Requisition in Guided Buying

A purchase requisition or PR is an approvable document that is created by users to request the order of items or services. PR's are easily identified by their unique PR ID which can be used to track the document as it's processed.

Let's look at a practical example of the request to receive process using SAP Ariba Guided Buying.

Our team has identified a need for new keyboards. Our administrative assistant, Sandy, has been tasked with ordering these keyboards. She locates the keyboards in Guided Buying and adds them to a purchase requisition.

After filling out the remaining details of the request, she submits the PR for approval.

Sandy’s Supervisor Mary receives a notification that there is a PR pending her approval.

Using the Guided Buying user interface, Mary reviews the details of the requisition and approves the PR.

The SAP Ariba Buying solution uses the data from the PR to generate a purchase order or PO which then gets transmitted to the supplier over the Ariba network.

Veronica, the supplier receives the PO in her Ariba Network inbox and can choose to send order confirmations or ship notices to update Sandy on the PO status.

Veronica then ships the keyboards and also submits an invoice to request payment.

Once Sandy receives the keyboards that the supplier shipped, she logs into the Guided Buying interface and completes one or more goods receipts to confirm they have been procured.

The supplier invoice that was sent by Veronica will be matched against the original PO and receipts, and if there are any discrepancies in the quantities, amounts, taxes, or other data, the invoice will require invoice reconciliation or IR processing.

Once the IR has been reconciled and approved, it generates and submits a payment request to the buyer's ERP system to communicate the reconciled amount approved for payment.

Going back to our practical example, let's examine how Sandy uses guided buying to create the purchase requisition for the keyboards. First, Sandy searches for the keyboards in the catalog and adds them to her shopping cart.

Sandy then proceeds to checkout where she fills out any required fields and can provide additional information like comments or attachments that might support the request.

Once completed, Sandy then submits the purchase requisition for approval.

Taking it step by step, first users search the catalog to find any items or services they want to purchase. The catalog features a quick and simple predictive text search.

Alternatively, users can navigate the catalog much like you would browse any standard ecommerce website. If users cannot find exactly what they're looking for, they can add ad hoc items to their cart.

Ad hoc items, sometimes referred to as non-catalog items, allow users to manually enter the details of the product or service they wish to buy.

During the entire process, company policies are enforced and can generate notifications to the users. These policies will also be used to automatically create the necessary approval flow, adding Approvers based on pre-configured criteria.

Search for Items

Predictive (type ahead) Search

eCommerce Look and Feel

If you’ve ever shopped online, you should be able to use guided buying

Ad Hoc Items

Allows the request of items not currently found in catalogs

Toss Out the Rule Book

Corporate policies are enforced automatically through notifications and approvals

As products or services are added to the cart, the shopping cart will appear, allowing users to easily update quantities or delete items from the cart.

Users can either click the X or can click anywhere outside of this cart box to continue shopping for additional items.

Once a user is finished, the checkout button will navigate them to the final stage of the buying process.

Review Your Cart

• View items, prices, and quantities
• Easily change quantities or remove items

Want to Keep Shopping?

• Click anywhere to continue browsing the catalog

Ready to Check out?

• Click the check out button to proceed to the last step

When a user clicks the checkout button, it takes them to the purchase requisition, where many fields can be defaulted automatically, such as the accounting data or addresses.

Users can again make adjustments to the items in the PR and any required fields must be completed before the PR can progress.

Most Fields are Defaulted

No need to manually enter information, everything is ready to go

Powered by Integration

Users have a default profile based on HR or ERP data which can include accounting data and addresses

Need to Change Something?

In the default configuration, users can make changes to the data shown on the checkout screen

Before submitting the PR for approval, users can view the approval flow to see who will need to approve the document, in what order and why. These approvers are dynamically added based on the details of the PR and the configured approval processes.

Changes to the quantities, amounts, or other data may update the approval flow to add, remove, or reorder the approvers.

After reviewing the final details of the requisition, users click the send request button to submit the PR for approval.

See Your Approval Flow

Users can see who must approve their request, and why

Conditional Approvers

Approvers may change based on amounts, commodities, on-versus-off contract, and more

Send Request

Submit the requisition for approval using the Send Request button

Once items are added to a shopping cart, the system opens a purchase requisition in composing status. PR's in composing are private and only visible to the user creating it. When the requisition is submitted for approval, it updates the status to submitted and remains in this status until fully approved by all users on the approval flow.

During this process, users can decide to withdraw the PR from the approval flow or can edit the requisition. Both options will place the PR back in composing status until resubmitted.

During the approval process, a PR can also be denied, at which point the PR will be sent back to the preparer, who can decide to make the required changes and resubmit the requisition.

After a PR has been fully approved by all required approvers, the status is updated to approved and then moves to ordering status.

Ordering status means that a requisition is being processed into one or more purchase orders to be sent to the supplier.

If the supplier is on the Ariba network, the ordering status typically lasts just a few seconds. Once the orders have been successfully sent to the suppliers, the PR status is updated to ordered and remains an ordered status until the requester submits goods receipts for some or all of the items or the requester submits as a cancellation. Changes can also be submitted to request amendments to the orders.

• Composing - The author is working on the requisition and has not yet submitted it. The requisition is private to the user who created it.
• Submitted - The requisition has been submitted for approval. It has not yet been fully approved or denied, but it is somewhere in the approval process. There is at least one person who still needs to take approval action.
• Denied - Someone in the approval chain has refused the request. After a request has been denied, it typically stays in the Denied state indefinitely, until either the preparer chooses to resubmit the request, or the person who originally denied the request decides to approve it.
• Ordering - The requisition was fully approved and is in the process of being converted to one or more purchase orders. For Requisitions being sent to suppliers via the Ariba Network, this state might last only seconds.
• Ordered - The purchase orders were successfully dispatched to the designated suppliers. A requisition stays in Ordered state until one of two things happens:
  • The requester receives some or all items from the requisition.
  • The requester decides to cancel the order.

All products or services must have a classification code assigned to them which is used to categorize items.

Classification codes, sometimes also referred to as commodity codes, are pre loaded into SAP Ariba using the United Nations Standard Products and Services Codes or UN SPSC schema.

Companies can choose to use their own custom codes, often referred to as category codes, which get mapped to a corresponding UN SPSC code.

• Each product or service must include a classification code, also referred to as a commodity code
• SAP Ariba uses this number to categorize and display products to end users
• Flexible architecture supports all classification codes including UNSPSC and SPSC
• In the default configuration, a subset of the UNSPSC classification code schema is pre-loaded into the application.
• Custom classification code schemas can be used by establishing a set of mapping files to translate the chosen set of commodity codes to other classification schemes on inbound/outbound transactions.
• UNSPSC versioning – You or your suppliers can assign a UNSPSC version number to catalogs

For more information on UNSPSC, visit www.unspc.org

All products and services must have a unit of measure or UOM assigned, which is used to identify how items are packaged. Examples of common unit of measures include codes for box, dozen, each pound, and more. Companies can also choose to use their own unit of measure values.

All catalog and non-catalog items need a UOM, which describes how the item is packaged

SAP Ariba supports UN/CEFACT and other schemes

When a requisition is in submitted status, the requester can click the withdraw button to pull the PR from the approval process, placing the requisition back in composing status.

From here, the user can choose to click edit to make changes to the PR and can resubmit the request for approval.

Alternatively, a user can click the edit button in a requisition in submitted status. This places the PR back in composing status and immediately opens the requisition in edit mode where changes and updates can be made and the PR can be resubmitted for approval.