Whenever there is a purchase on campus where the vendor requires a signature on a contract, the contract must be reviewed properly through the Procurement Contract Workflow System. All new staff members to the university that need to have access to the Procurement Contract Review Workflow System must go through formal training provided by Procurement Services. Once a staff member has completed the training,
they will be granted access to the workflow system by Procurement Services. The Workflow System is an extension of the Banner System and it takes 24 hours for the access to be live for the staff member that was granted access. Once the staff member has access, they should see a workflow tab listed in PioneerWeb, next to their Banner tab. To begin the contract initiation process, the staff member will need to click on their Employee Tab, and then the Procurement & Contracts Folder to access the workflow system.
On the next screen, to enter a vendor contract for review, please click on the first link titled, Contract Review. *Please note, staff member must ensure that they do have a workflow tab that appears in their personal PioneerWeb before moving forward with this process. If staff member received access from Procurement Services properly, after clicking Contract Review, staff member will move on to see the contract review request form. If proper access was not granted to staff member, they will receive a warning screen that states that they need to contact Procurement for proper contract workflow review training.
On the next screen staff member will see two options. In order to enter a contract for review for a purchase, please ensure that the first radio button is chosen. The second option is an entirely different workflow portal that Procurement Services does not have access to. This Other Contracts portal is for any contract that does not directly pertain to the university buying or paying for good or a service. Some examples are Sponsorships, Internships, Non-Disclosure/Confidentiality Agreements, and rentals of University Facilities. If a staff member needs access to the Other Contracts portal, they will need to contact The Office of General Counsel to receive access. After selecting the first radio button, click submit and you will be taking to the next screen which contains the contract review template form.
The first item that the staff member will have to do is choose the Budgetary Approver from their department from the drop down menu.
The Budgetary Approver will be the individual that should make sure that the department has enough money in their budget to proceed with the purchase. The Budgetary Approver should also double check the contract submitted to ensure the correct amount money being requested
for payment is reflected in the contract. If a Budgetary Approver is not listed in the drop down menu, the staff member must contact Procurement Services to request that a Budgetary Approver be added to the drop down list.
The next three boxes should be filled out by the staff member. The first box is a title for the contract that is to be reviewed. Most often it is the vendor name that can be put into this box. The second box is restrictive to only 100 characters. The system will not allow over 100 characters typed in this box. The third box is optional but allows for more characters if needed to better explain the need for review of the vendor contract. The third box should be filled out by the staff member to request when they want to the contract review completed by. *Please note, it is Procurement Services policy that we must have at least 10 business days turnaround to fairly review a vendor contract. This form will not allow for any date prior to 10 days from the date that the contract is being entered into the workflow system. Also, please note the formatting of the date example in the third box. Please follow that formatting when entering the date. The system will not allow any other date format in this box.
The next box the staff member will need to fill out is the Vendor s Information and the Contract Information. The vendor company name, or vendor individual name, the vendor contact person, and the vendor s phone number must all be filled out. *Please note that the system will not allow for any symbol characters in the phone number box. Please only use numbers. The contract start date box is the effective date that is
actually found written in the contract and usually is a separate date from when the contract is needed to be completed by. Again, please follow the date format provided in the example in the box. The contract end date box is the date the contract term written in the actual contract is supposed to end. If there is not an end date listed, the staff member should estimate when the contract term is supposed to end. If the contract is for a one day event, please enter the next day after the event occurred in the contract end date box. The system will not allow for the same date in the contract start date box, for the contract end date box. The next item is a check box. Please either check this box if the contract term is for a year or less, or do not check the box if the contract is above one year. This indicates to Procurement Services whether the contract will need to be routed to the Vice Chancellor of Business and Financial Affairs for signature. If the contract is above a year, the staff member will have to enter the amount of years the term of the contract is for and the annual total cost of the contract. If the contract is a 1 year term or under, staff member only needs to fill out the Total Dollar Amount of Contract box. *Please note, the system does not allow for any symbol characters in the Total Dollar Amount for Contract box. Please don t use a dollar sign in front of the total cost amount. The last two boxes on the form are optional. The staff member can reference previous vendor contract numbers or purchase order numbers in these boxes if they know them to reference. This helps Procurement Services review the old contracts against this new contract for review.
The next few boxes are the type of contract that the staff member is requesting needs review. Depending on what type of contract it is will determine if more departments other than Procurement Services will have to review the contract. Each option, if chosen by the check box, will open up a description box that the staff member can then enter a description if they so choose, about the contract. The most common contracts
Procurement reviews is in the Event Information box. With certain contract type options, there is also a link to the departments respective websites for more information about their department if needed. Once all areas that pertain to the contract are chosen, click submit for Submit for Contract Review/Approval. If the form was filled out correctly, the form should disappear completely from the screen. If there is an error on the form, the form will remain on the screen and the error will show in the upper left hand side of the form.
The next step is that the staff member will wait to receive an email from Procurement@du.edu. The email takes about 10 minutes to generate from the workflow system. The staff member should make sure to check their junk and clutter folders if they do not see an email from procurement@du.edu in their inbox. An example of the email is shown below: This email indicates that the workflow system has generated a record with a vendor contract record number. The email is requesting that the staff member now go into their workflow tab in PioneerWeb and attach the related documents for review.
Under the Workflow Tab, the staff member will need to click on the Go To Workflow Button.
The staff member will then see a worklist with the vendor contract number and the title of the contract request they submitted. The staff member will need to click on the contract title like a website link.
The staff member will then see a screen that has a permanent record of what was previously entered. Staff member should scroll down to the bottom of the screen to attach the contract, insurance, and any other pertinent documents for review.
Each document needs to be attached one at a time. The staff member should click the attach file button each time, for each document needing to be uploaded to the workflow system.
For each document, the staff member should make sure to click the browse button to pull in the document from where it was saved on the staff member s desktop and then click the second radio button and title the document in the box provided. The text box below is optional but is available for further description of the document being attached. The staff member should click the attach button when complete. Repeat this step for as many documents needed.
Once staff member ensures all the necessary documents are attached in workflow, the staff member will need to click the Complete button. After that, this screen will disappear and a review request will be sent via email, by Procurement@du.edu, to the Budgetary Approver. The
Budgetary Approver will then have to go into their own workflow tab, in PioneerWeb, and approve the workflow review item by following the same steps as above. Once the contract review is approved by the Budgetary Approver, it will be sent to the Procurement Services workflow queue for review. At this point the staff member will not need to do anything else unless there are questions from the Procurement Contract Administrator. To view the status of a pending or completed vendor contract see below:
On this screen the staff member will be able to view any contracts that they have entered into the system. If they click on the status button to the right, they can view who has reviewed the contract and the date that the review was completed. If a stop box is empty, with no date, that means the review has not been completed yet. At the top of this screen the staff member can also query specific contracts by entering any type of keyword that pertains to their contract. To change the status of a pending contract to a completed contract, click on the drop down menu shown below.