The PA (Procurement Authorization) function provides the facility for an employee to request authorization to make purchases with APPROVED eBusiness Partners contracted with the University of Arkansas. These are vendors who have been defined as eBusiness Partners for which a Univeristy of Arkansas Purchase Order is not required, and the individual for whom authorization is granted will have a unique ID and in some instances, a password in order to purchase goods.
Each Procurement Authorization Request must include a default cost center for expensing of charges. Prior to charges being expensed a user will have the opportunity to 'redistribute' charges using a pre-defined set of cost centers pre-approved for that employee. To add additional cost centers for use in redistributing charges you will access the PAPC function.
Once saved, the transaction will route to the cost center managers for the default cost center entered on the procurement authorization.
Once approved, an 'administrator' in Business Affairs will access the list of approved authorizations for further action. Once the 'administrator' issues the Procurement Authorization, the employee for whom the authorization has been requested will either receive an ID and pasword via email for access to the online functions of the e-Business Partner, or instructions via email regarding training and other information related to the authorization request.
| Once you press PF10 the Authorization request is submitted via TARGET for approval. |
To submit a Procurement Authorization
A Procurement Authorization may be updated from any Status. The only restriction will be when the PA still has a Status of 'A' the PA may only be updated on the same day that it was created; otherwise you must wait until the Status has been updated by the 'administrator' of the account before you can go back and make any updates.
There are several reasons a Procurement Authorization may need be canceled: For Example:
Once you have created a Procurement Authorization for an employee, there will be many times when you will want to include, in addition to the default cost center on PA, additional cost centers for use in re-distributing charges downloaded. This is especially true for those departments that have grants, cost sharing cost centers, etc. that are not allowable to be used as a default cost center, but can be used on the back end to re-distribute charges.
As additional cost centers are added, it must be noted that these cost centers are linked to an individual employee for their use. Once the use of a cost center is approved via the cost center managers, this cost center may be used by this employee for any eBusiness Partner this employee has a Procurement Authorization setup with.
There will come a time when you will want to remove certain cost centers for use by an employee. There are a couple of reasons this may happen:
Below are the lists available for use when locating Procurement Authorizations:
By selecting the appropriate Employee ID and then 'optionally' selecting a Vendor, you will see all the transactions that took place for a particular Employee ID and Vendor.
By inputing the appropriate BU in the BU field in the banner you will see all of the Procurement Authorizations that have been created for the BU you selected in the banner, along with the names of the employees and the Status of the Procurement Authorization.
LPAE - List PA's for an Employee (opt Vendor)By inputing the appropriate Employee ID and 'optionally' the Vendor ID, you will see all of the 'effective dated' records for a particular Employee.
This is a great list to utilize when you are canceling someone's PA, in order to also see what other cost centers a particular employee has been authorized to use.
The following list facility will display any additional pre-approved cost centers that have been assigned to a specific employee.
By pressing PF1 and selecting the appropriate Employee ID in the Employee ID field in the banner and pressing 'Enter', any additonal cost centers that have been added for the Employee ID you have selected, will be displayed.
By pressing the PF4 (DCode> a window will be displayed which will show the default cost center that is being used on the Procurement Authorization (PA) for the Employee, along with displaying the e-Business Partner.
This is a great list to utilize when a cost center is no longer valid and you want to identify all of the employees who are currently setup to use this cost center. IMPORTANT NOTE: The cost center entered in the banner will only display employee names, IF that cost center was entered from the PAPC command. The list will not recognize 'default' cost centers entered from PA.
The following list facility will display all employees currently authorized to use a particular Cost center when distributing charges.
In the CCC field type the cost center you are interested in, press 'Enter'.
If there are any employees currently authorized to use this cost center, those employee names will be then be displayed.
Depending on the e-Business partner an employee's charges may be downloaded to the BASIS system daily, weekly, or monthly. Each e-Business partner will have specific payment terms which will define the Cut-Off Date a department must use to locate a particular list of charges.
Although there are several lists that can help you identify the Cut-Off Date we will discuss the use of the EBP - eBusiness Parter table.
Once charges have been downloaded by an e-Business Partner, departments will have a certain amount of time to approve these charges prior to the entire invoice being paid. It is important to note, that regardless of whether or not you approve your charges, the invoice will be paid once the Cut-Off date has been reached.
Now that you have located the Cut-Off Date you have several options available for locating charges.