Blanket Contracts
A blanket contract is a purchasing agreement that your organization makes with a vendor to pre-plan the purchase of materials or services. These contracts typically contain multiple delivery dates over a period of time, often negotiated to take advantage of predetermined pricing.
Blanket contracts are also often used when there is a recurring need for expendable goods or when your organization buys large quantities from one vendor. Based on the purchase request or purchase order, invoice items can be created as needed until the contract is fulfilled.
As long as the blanket contract is in an Active status, it can be referenced by new purchasing documents to order materials or services. Contracts can be set to a Suspended status so that they are temporarily unavailable for new purchases. This might be used while re-negotiating terms with a vendor, if you are researching new vendors for a particular item or service, or for other business requirements.
The following sections further describe concepts related to blanket contract management.
Blanket Contract Access Lists
Blanket contract access lists identify which users have the authority to create charges against a blanket contract. The list also establishes a maximum dollar amount that the user is authorized to charge for a single purchase order.
When a blanket contract is created, it references this list to provide the reference of authorized users. When a blanket contract is being applied toward creating a purchase order, the system verifies that the user is valid based on this list and that the person’s purchasing limit is not exceeded.
Your system can be configured with lists of users who are authorized to issue purchasing documents against a blanket contract. Settings on the blanket contract determine whether or not the contract is restricted to a particular access list, which list of users has access or, if no access list is indicated, a default dollar value limit for the contract. When an access list is in use, a limit can be set for each individual user.
Vendor Bid Download
Vendor bid download can be used as a way to request new bids for vendor materials and services prior to the expiration of the blanket contract.
Users can click on the Explorer Zone Menu
icon and select Export to Excel to retrieve an excel file listing the current
bid on materials or services. This file can then be sent out to have vendors populate the
“Quoted” columns with new bid information. When the bids are returned, they would need to be
manually assessed and the winning quotes uploaded, by selecting the “Upload Lines From File”
hyperlink in the Additional Process section, to a new BC Header to create the line items.
See Creating CSV Files for more
information about creating and formatting csv files.