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How to raise a non-catalogue order

Several of the University’s major suppliers have hosted catalogues on Oracle R12, meaning that you can search and select your products and see current University of Oxford prices. Where the company you wish to order from does not have a hosted catalogue – or the product you want is not part of that – then you will need to raise a non-catalogue requisition.

You start this process from the main iProcurement homepage by clicking on Non-Catalog Request.

This is a screenshot of the R12.2 iProcurement home screen with the Non-Catalogue button highlighted

 

This will bring up the “Non-Catalog Request” screen which is where you enter all the relevant information for your order.

This is a screenshot of the R12.2 non-catalogue order screen

Selcting your Supplier

The first thing to do is to find and select the correct supplier by searching in the Supplier Name box. Enter the first part of the company name and click the magnifying glass symbol or hit the Tab key and this will launch a pop-up window with a list of the search results. You can then select the correct company and site from that list.

There are a lot of suppliers on R12, so if you cannot find the one you want you can try the following:

  • Try searching a notable part of the name surrounded by % signs as the search is very case sensitive so reacts to spaces, hyphens, abbreviations, etc (for example “AD Instruments” will not give results but “A D Instruments” will, so try %Instruments% as your search)
  • Try searching for the company website to see if their trading name is different from their brand name (for example, R&D Systems, Novus Biologicals and Tocris all trade as “BioTechne”).
  • If they are a foreign supplier, look at their site to see if they have a UK/EU distributor who might be set up and source the goods from them instead.
  • If the Supplier is an internal University of Oxford Department then just search for the subject name – for example the NDCN will just appear as “Clinical Neurosciences” and not “Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences”.

If you still cannot find the supplier you need then please contact NDCN Orders and we’ll talk you through the possible steps to proceed. Please do not click the “New Supplier” tick box and attempt a New Supplier Set-up until you’ve spoken with Orders.

Supplier sites

Please take a moment to check the site details of the supplier to see that they match the details of the order. If a company has multiple sites then you can use the address to try and select the correct one for ordering your product, or you can ask NDCN Orders for advice.

One important factor is the Currency that the site is set up in, as the PO *must* be raised in that same currency, as must the eventual invoice. The example below shows Illumina Cambridge Ltd, who have sites in both US Dollars and UK Pounds, so be careful to select the correct one.

This is a screenshot of the different supplier sites for Illumina Cambridge

It’s also worth checking the Communication Method to see if it says “EMAIL”. If yes then the PO will automatically be emailed out to the company when it is ready, but if it is blank or says NONE then it won’t be sent out at all and you’ll need to request a PDF copy from NDCN Orders so you can manually email a copy to the supplier.

This is a screenshot of the supplier site for Alomone

Item type & description

Please leave the Item Type as the default “Goods I can provide description, item price and quantity”.

The Item Description is the narrative description of the goods you want to order, and this will be what the supplier see so please make sure this is clear and has all the information they might need to identify the order.

This is particularly true for orders for services rather than goods, where there may not be a catalogue number to help identify the items. In these cases please make sure to add plenty of details, for example instead of “Flights for New York Conference” you should put something like:

“Flights from London Heathrow to JFK New York for J Bloggs, 10–14 April 2021 as per quote Q123”

Category Code

These can be searched either by number or by name. If you use the latter it’s best to pick a key word and surround it with % to give the best chance of finding it – don’t forget to change the search criteria from Category to Description. Try to be as general as possible in your search terms to maximise the chances of finding a suitable match.

I have prepared a list of some of our most commonly used category codes. These codes are very general and you may find that there is nothing that exactly matches what you are buying. In these cases then please just use the closest appropriate code. The requisition will be checked by the NDCN Orders Team before becoming a PO so we can make any necessary changes and advise you if an incorrect code has been used.

When entering an additional line to an order for delivery charges, please use the same category code as for the main line items rather than a specific delivery code.

Other Boxes

Quantity is the number of this item you want to order.

Unit of Measure is always “Each” (or type “E” and hit tab and it will autocomplete).

Currency should be set to the correct currency from the drop-down list. As outlined above this much match the currency that the company is set up to trade in, as well as the currency that they will invoice us in.

It defaults to GBP, but if you need to select an alternative currency then this will show additional boxes to let you see the current conversion rates. Do not alter these settings.

Supplier Item is the company’s catalogue number to identify the product you need. If there is no catalogue number you could use this field for any relevant quote or reference numbers.

Adding Items to your cart

When you’ve filled in all the appropriate fields for your line item you will need to click “Add to Cart” to save that into your shopping basket. Once you’ve done this the item will appear in your shopping cart in the top right of your screen.

If you want to continue ordering further items from the same company on the same requisition then you can click back into the boxes and overtype them with the new item description, supplier item, quantity and price and then click Add to Cart” each time. Each new line will also appear in your shopping cart in the corner of your screen.

You can also order items from different companies on the same requisition. These will become separate Purchase Orders but combining them on the one requisition means you will only need to enter the grant code once. For this you follow the same procedure as above but make sure to also change the Supplier Name to reflect the correct company.

Please do not mix suppliers on a single requisition if one of your orders has an attachment (such as a quote) as this would then be sent out to all suppliers.

When you have added all the items that you want to order on that requisition to your basket then you click on “View Cart and Checkout”.

This is a screenshot of the Shopping Card inset in R12

This will take you to the final summary screen where you can quickly check that all the order information is as you expect it to be. If so then you can click the “Checkout” button to get to the coding screen, which is explained here.

This is a screenshot of the Shopping cart before checkout from R12

This guide is available as a pdf copy.