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  • Using Vendor Punchout (VPO) - School Specialty

    The vendor punchout module in eFinance Plus can be used to submit and order in Amazon, School Specialty, and CDW. The benefit to using this module is it makes the transition from Requisition, to the vendor website to make the purchase, to Purchase order creation a more smooth transition. In addition, all purchases will now be encumbered in the budget from the start of the order.

    Notes about using Vendor Punchout

    1. When submitting through VPO, only one charging record per order. If order requires multiple budget units/accounts you have two options:

      1. Do completely separate orders by budget/account.

      2. You can allocate the whole order to one budget/acct and then edit once the requisition is created, resave to route for approval

    2. Please complete any budget transfer prior to creating the VPO requisition. If the budget does not have the appropriate funds, the system will fail and your whole requisition/order will be lost.

    3. The shipping addresses in School Specialty do not apply. The address selected at the beginning of the requisition is what the vendor will use to ship the order.

    Notes about School Specialty

    1. You the BH secretary will NO LONGER use admin signs ins to approve orders in School Specialty. If you are currently logged in as admin, please sign out first before using the punchout and close all tabs/windows.

    2. To submit the order, click TRANSFER, do not use save cart unless your shopping isn’t complete.  This is essentially like the School Specialty staff user sign in creating a cart and submitting for approval.

    3. When a teacher is sharing a cart, they will need to enter the Budget Secretary email in the approver email field.

    4. All items ordered through School Specialty will now need to be Received in eFinance for AP to process invoice payments.

     Instructions

    1. Start by logging into eFinance Plus

    2. Navigate to Purchasing → Entry & Processing → Requisition Processing → Requisitions

    3. Instead of selecting + for a new requisition, Select Punchout Shopping

      image-20240325-181959.png
      Punchout Shopping in Requisition Page
    4. Select the desired Site from Vendor Interface (School Specialty)

    5. Select the desired Approval group

    6. Choose the desired shipping address

    7. Select the budget code from dropdown list and corresponding account

    8. MUST add VPO to comment field, if you want to include more details you have 25 spaces of information that will appear on the PO desc line - just include the additional information as follows:
      ”VPO-xxxxxx” (x=any additional information for you the BH secretary)

    9. If charging a project, select those. (Not required)

    10. Select Submit to Vendor and wait 5-10 seconds to punchout.

    11. It will transition to the vendors website and allow you to process the order. Add desired items to cart or select My Dashboard then select View Carts to Retrieve, search by cart # or scroll through list to find desired cart. Click View Cart, then Transfer!

      1. Searching by cart# is key as you will see the entire district’s carts from all departments. This is a SS issue, not ours.

    12. Once the transfer is complete, it should process and punch back into Vendor Punchout screen with a confirmation requisition number and order details.

    13. The completed order screen will show only the first line item although all items are appearing in the req.

    14. The order will wait to be submitted until the requisition is approved, transitioned to purchase order and printed.

    Orders will not be visible until after the requisition has been approved, printed, and sent to the vendor which can take up to 24 hours.

    To view order status, log in to your admin School Specialty account and select My Orders. Then select the filter All and Apply.

    If you are missing the Punchout Shopping option. Reach out to Accounting Office to have this added.

    Order amount exceeds pre-encumbrance budget - Error

    In the event that you receive the following error message that the order amount exceeds pre-encumbrance budget message:

    Order amount exceeds budget message.png
    Order exceeds budget error message

    Please Refresh the window/tab if the budget has the appropriate balances

     Re-Transfer a previously Transferred Cart

    You may need to transfer a previously transferred cart in the event that a requisition was rejected or deleted or if the budget did not have enough funds during the first attempt. Please utilize the steps below to find that cart and transfer it.

    1. Follow the initial steps for accessing Punchout, entering the required budget/order details and selecting Submit to Vendor.

    2. When back in school specialty select My Dashboard

    3. Click View Transferred Carts

    4. Click on the cart number with the desired order.

    5. If you do not need to modify the order at all, then at the bottom of the order screen click Re-Transfer

    6. If you do need to modify the item quantity or add/remove items from the original order, select the button Copy Items to Current Cart.

    7. Then modify the cart and when ready finish the order as needed by selecting Transfer on the My Cart screen.

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