Policies are Excel files that customize the behavior of guided buying for your organization. Guided buying checks policies when users perform specific actions. For example, when users submit a requisition, guided buying evaluates fields in it against your validation policies.
Validation policies ensure consistent compliance for all purchases and help users understand the proper process to follow, including which item to choose and which suppliers are preferred. These built-in policies decrease the need for users to read procurement manuals and free up the procurement department to focus on higher-value procurement activities.
By having a single starting point for all your organization's purchases, you can load and enforce one set of procurement policies.
Organizations can configure policy errors and warnings related to different scenarios that occur during the creation of a request, informing users about policy violations:
- Information messages Information messages display text and allow users to process their requisition.
- Warnings allow users to provide a justification for the purchase.
- Errors prevent users from submitting the request.
Administrators can create a new policy file or export the existing one from their site.
You load a file in Excel (XLS or XLSX) format to configure your validation policies. The policies go into effect immediately after loading the configuration file.
When policies are added to this configuration file, previously loaded policies must also be included because guided buying creates new data and updates existing data during policy uploads.Guided buying evaluates validation policies after users select Add to cart in request forms, Check out in the shopping cart, Submit in the Checkout or non-PO invoice page, or open a saved request.
Play the video to learn how to upload validation policies to guided buying.