Department of Engineering

Procurement in the Engineering Department

Requisitions and purchase orders in the Department should be created using the Department's EDRS system. This page provides information on the use of EDRS and details the procedures which must be followed. Requisitions which do not conform to these will be returned by the Department's Purchasing Office.

Previous Systems

EDRS replaces the University's iProcurement system which in turn in May 2009 replaced the Department's previous in-house requisitions system (on which EDRS is based). Although iProcurement will be phased out for Departmental use at the end of March 2012 and it is no longer possible to create new requisitions on the old in-house system, both remain accessible as a repositories of past requisitions.

Use of EDRS

EDRS is intended to be intuitive to use. It is similiar in appearance to the Department's previous in-house system but with the addition of a couple of extra tabs to enter the additional information now required by the University's purchasing processes. Divisional Administrators have received training in the use of EDRS and should be consulted if there are any problems.

Reference information and documentation

• EDRS Home Page.
• Job numbers, grants, and CUFS account codes - EDRS uses CUFS account codes; use this to search for them by job number, name or owner.
(Job number owners/PIs can add/remove additional authorisers.)
• Purchasing codes - browsable list of item category codes for use when raising requisitions. This is part of the general UFS documentation (and as such is relevant to EDRS as well as iProcurement).
• Engineering Department item search facility
• University Financial Regulations - financial regulations and information. Note that the Department's purchasing thresholds are different from the University's - see below.
• University's iProcurement home page (pre Mar 2012) - past requisitions only
• Engineering Department requisitions system (pre May 2009) - past requisitions only

Raising requisitions

Please follow these guidelines when raising a requisition in the Engineering Department:

• The Purchasing Office processes only allow one supplier per requisition. EDRS supports this and will, where needed, automatically split a market-place requistion.
• When raising 'Non-Catalog' requisitions, check the details of the supplier carefully: some suppliers may appear in the database more than once, with different locations; make sure you select the correct one.
• The delivery location in EDRS should specify which site you want final delivery to; the purchase order to the supplier will normally specify the Main Site Stores and delivery will then be arranged from there to other sites. The direct delivery box should only be ticked for chemicals or very large or heavy equipment or which otherwise requires special delivery arrangments. Any such special arrangements must be agreed in advance with the Department's Purchasing Office.
• The line items on the requisition should match those expected on the delivery note(s) and the invoice(s) so that Stores can check these against the requisition.

Approval of requisitions

You should normally send requisitions to the Principal Investigator (PI) for approval. Once the PI has checked the requisition and approved it, it will be forwarded either to the the Finance Office for Research Council grants or direct to the Purchasing Office for other cost centres. PIs can automatically approve their own requisitions on their cost centres.

If you get no response from an approver, you may withdraw the requisition and submit it for approval to someone else with approval rights for that cost centre.

Returning goods

The return of any tangible goods must be arranged with the Purchasing Office. The costs of the return or rejection of goods that have not been recorded by the Purchasing Office will be charged to the cost centre to which the goods were to be charged in the original requisition.

Suppliers on CUFS

It is not possible to raise a requisition on a supplier who has not been previously loaded into the University's Finance System (CUFS). You can check to see whether a supplier is in the system; if they are not, you will need to complete a 'Supplier Search and Request' form and submit it to the Purchasing Office (in paper form or electronically).

Where the cost of an item is modest, and the use of that supplier is a 'one-off', then purchase by corporate credit card should be organised at a local level. Information on who holds a corporate credit card is available from the Finance Office.

Purchasing thresholds

The University's Financial Regulations require supporting documentation to be provided for purchases above certain thresholds. The Department's thresholds are different from the University's, and are the ones to be used when raising requisitions in the Department. The following table shows the Departmental thresholds.

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