How to Get started
First time in iBuy? Please contact Unit Security Contact (USC) for your department to get the access.
Departments:
Below you will find tips to help departments transition smoothly to iBuy as well as key considerations regarding best practices for the use of iBuy.
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Identify iBuy Users
Those employees who currently use P-Cards and/or requisition/approve purchases in Banner are prime candidates to use iBuy. However, any University employee involved with procuring goods and services in the course of official University business may also use iBuy. This includes faculty, staff, and even student employees, such as lab and research assistants.
Once those employees who will use iBuy have been identified, the next step is to assign roles as appropriate.
Best Practice Tip: Decentralize transactional activity to the organizational level at which purchasing decisions are actually made. iBuy’s ease of use, workflow functionality, and reporting capability are well-suited to support such decentralization.
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Assign Roles
There are seven iBuy roles that apply to departmental users. Listed with each role below are some factors to consider while making decisions regarding user roles:
Shopper – Useful for those who make purchasing decisions, but perhaps do not have a comprehensive understanding of FOAPALs or P-Card usage (i.e., coding charging instructions). Once a Shopper has completed a requisition it MUST go to a Department Account Coder. Recommended for student employees. A Shopper cannot also be a Department Account Coder or Requestor.
Department Account Coder – This role is required for all departments. The Department Account Coder must be someone who is capable of accurately specifying charging instructions, identifying commodity codes, etc. Via iBuy’s workflow functionality, a Department Account Coder will receive requisitions created by Shoppers within a department and assign the appropriate FOAPAL information, at which point the coded requisition is sent to the department approval queue.
Requestor – A Requestor, in effect, is a Shopper and Department Account Coder rolled into one. In other words, a Requestor is someone who makes purchasing decisions and is capable of correctly coding FOAPAL information.
Approver – See Departmental Approvals.
Executive Approver – Useful for administrators who need the ability to approve or reject purchases, but who do not have the level of familiarity with purchasing and/or accounting procedures to make changes to an iBuy requisition.
Query Only – Useful for those who want to lookup information such as requisitions, purchase orders, and invoices, but do not need to create requisitions or approve invoices.
Invoice Acknowledger – This role is required for all departments. Useful for those who need the ability to approve, return, or forward an invoice within their approval queue.
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Departmental Approvals
Departmental approvals are one aspect of iBuy’s overall approval process. As such, it is a control point that deserves attention as departments begin using iBuy.
When assigning Approvers, administrators should consider which staff will be responsible for reviewing and approving the orders of others on a routine basis. Such users should be given sufficient approval authority to handle approving the most common orders. In addition, administrators should consider who will need to look at larger orders and provide those users with a higher level of approval authority. A hierarchy of approval levels will allow for appropriate allocation of workload while ensuring that large purchases are presented for review by more senior or experienced staff.
The following approval queues are available for departmental use:
$0 - $4999 (Optional)
$5000 - $9999 (Optional)
$10,000 - $49,999
$50,000 - $249,999
$250,000 - $499,999
$500,000 - $999,999
$1,000,000+
In order to ensure that iBuy’s approval process is no more restrictive than those required by P-Card and Banner, while at the same time providing departments with the opportunity and flexibility to exercise greater internal controls over purchases, the first two queues above may be invoked at each department’s option. An Approver or Executive Approver must be assigned to each of the remaining queues.
Note: Departments are strongly encouraged to use the $5000 - $9999 queue; those departments that choose not to use this queue subject all of their departmental Requestors and Department Account Coders to Statements of Economic Interests reporting requirements. iBuy Approvers (with the exception of those that are included in the $0 - $4999 queue only) may be required to file as well.
Best Practice Tip: Include at least two individuals in each approval queue. Although Approvers may establish proxies for known absences, having multiple Approvers at each level addresses the possibility of unplanned absences.
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Establish iBuy Access
Access to iBuy must be requested through Unit Security Contacts (USC). Refer to a list of USCs by department to find your Unit Security Contact.
The iBuy Project Team has worked with AITS to add the ability for USCs to process iBuy access requests via the same Security Application that they are already accustomed to using to process access requests for Banner Finance, HR/Pay, etc.
The Team has since shared the following communications with USCs:
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