Procurement Workbench consolidates all of the procurement features that our procurement users need to manage software transactions.
Watch our 1-minute video (below) to see a quick overview demo of Procurement Workbench. For more details please continue to read this article.
Navigating to Procurement Workbench
To navigate to Procurement Workbench click on Buy in the main navigation and then select Procurement Workbench from the menu.
This will take you to the Procurement Workbench page.
There are mini tiles on the Procurement Workbench and each tile is a stage in the procurement process. You can see these tiles under the Transaction Status and Actions heading – Open Requests, Quotes Ready, Approval Required, Open Invoices and Invoices Overdue.
Open Requests
In the Open Request tab you can see all the special quotes that are open.
Note: SoftwareONE offers millions of products for customers to buy. Frequently bought products are added to the customer’s item catalog. PyraCloud also provides users with a way to request products and pricing information which are not in their product catalog. This can be done by creating special quotes for non-catalog products. You can read more details in our Special Quotes knowledge article.
Once a special quote has been completed, it will no longer show in this section.
Within the grid view you can:
- Sort the list
- Filter the records based on any specific value for columns
- Customize the grid by adding /removing columns
- Group by columns
You can also raise a new quote by clicking on the “Request Special Quote” button at the top of the grid.
You can learn how to create a Special Quote here.
Quotes Ready
The Quotes Ready tab will show you a list of all Quotes that are ready to be converted to an Order.
If you click on any tile at the top of the Procurement Workbench main page (apart from Open Requests), you will be redirect to the “Transactions in Progress” tab. The “Transaction Category” filter e.g. quote ready, approval required etc will be applied. You can simply select another category from the dropdown to change views.
From within this section you can perform a number of actions such as:
- Click on the quote to open up a more detailed view
- Click on “Details” in the Actions column to open up a detailed view of the quote
- Click on the more action button (…) to:
- View more details
- Delete Quote
- Convert to Order
- Export to PDF
- Export to Excel (csv)
- Export to Excel (xlsx)
Note: You can see quotes opened within the last 90 days. If quotes were opened before 90 days, you can see those quotes in the special quote history page by navigating to Documents>Special Quotes
Expired Quotes
You can view expired quotes by clicking on the “Transaction Category” drop down and selcting “Quotes Expired”.
This will open up the list of all quotes which have expired. You can renew expired quotes by clicking on “Renew” in the Action column.
Note: If the expired quote is a sales quote, your SoftwareONE Account Manager will be notified of the renewal request. If the expired quote is a PyraCloud quote, you can renew the quote yourself.
Approval Required
This tab will also take you to the “Transactions in Progress” tab, however the list will be filtered by the orders which need approval.
You may be able to approve some of the orders yourself, however this is based on the approval workflow setup and some orders may need to be approved by someone else as shown below.
You can learn more about setting up Purchase Approval Workflows in this knowledge article.
You can click on “Approve” in the Action column to approve the orders you have permission to approve.
If “Approve” is not visible next to an order and you see “Details”, this means those orders will need to be approved as per the approval workflow setup.
You can click on “Details” which will open up the Order Details Page and you have the option to resend the approval email to all approvers.
Open and Overdue Invoices
The Invoices Open and Invoices Overdue tabs will also take you to the “Transactions in Progress” tab, however the list will be filtered by the orders which are open and orders which are overdue.
Overdue Invoices are highlighted as these may delay further purchasing.
Buy Now
This section allows you to search for products within your defined catalog. It provides the below search options:
- Products – allows you to search from your defined catalog/s
- Products from Top Publishers – displays products from top SoftwareONE publishers that you can select from
- Services and Solutions – allows you to pick any of the services being provided by SoftwareONE
Note: If “Search by Top Publisher” is not available, please reach out to your SoftwareONE Account Manager as this requires special permissions to be set up.
The “Buying For” option is only available when you have multiple catalogs available. It allows you to purchase a product for a company that is different to your default company.
The “Go to Advanced Search” will take you to the main “Products and Services” page of the platform. This gives you an additional filtering option in order to further narrow down your search.
The “Buy Now” tab may contain subsections as explained below:
- Favorites – shows your personal and global (company’s) favorites so that you can quickly add items to your cart
- Top Services – provides a list of top services so you can quickly add these to your cart
- SaaS Subscription – provides a drop down so you can select your cloud account. This will list the subscriptions which are active and inactive. There is an option to make changes to your subscriptions by clicking on the “Manage Subscription” button.
CSP Subscription: This is only available when you have access to a CSP tenant. If you want to have this available, please get in touch with your SoftwareONE Account Manager.
Purchase History
The Purchase History Tab shows the complete purchase history based on the defined time rage selected from the dropdown as shown below.
This gives you visibility into the full purchase history and provides links to all documents generated in the procurement cycle. This includes special quotes, invoices along with PO, country and amount details.
Note: If you do not have permissions to see documentation, please contact your SoftwareONE Account Manager.
You can also add additional columns, which enable you to get an idea of how many days it took in each step of the process. This can give your organization a high level of SLA tracking.
You can also export a purchase history report in a number of formats as shown below:
Exports
You have the option to export a number of reports directly within Procurement Workbench.
To do this click on “Exports” on the top right of the page. This will open up a list of the following reports you can export:
- Open Requests (CSV)
- Open Requests (Excel)
- Transactions in Progress (CSV)
- Transactions in Progress (Excel)
- Purchase History (CSV)
- Purchase History (Excel)
From the Exports dropdown menu you will also see a link called “Go to My Reports”. This link will take you directly to your Generated Reports page.
You can also navigate directly to your scheduled reports where you can view existing scheduled reports or create new scheduled reports by clicking on the “Create/Schedule Reports” link.
You can learn more about Scheduled Reports in this knoweldge article.
Help
The “Can we help you” section at the bottom of each page provides a way for you to get in touch with your SoftwareONE Account Manager.
Click on “My Account Team” to see contact details for your Account Manager. You can also click on “Request Special Quote from our Team” which will open up the “Special Quote Request” page where you can enter details for the product you require a quote for.
You can learn how to create a Special Quote here.
If you need more information about Quotes, Orders and Invoices please click on the hyperlinks to read the knowledge articles.