Tracking Contract+ Payments to Improve Contract Monitoring
After extensive review of existing process and functionality regarding tracking payments associated with business contracts, Procurement and Payment Services (PPS) in partnership with Enterprise Business IT Solutions (eBITS) updated functionality in *DEFINE to improve contract monitoring. Improved functionality and processes:
- Establish a common practice to ensure payments under a business contract do not exceed approved dollar limits;
- Provide processing offices and college, school, and units (CSUs) with a standardized process to associate payments with contracts; and
- Aid CSU contract administrators in their role to ensure terms and conditions in their business contracts are met.
The contract monitoring process includes a new required document field, Contract?, on the *DEFINE VP2 and VPE documents allows document creators to indicate whether the payment voucher includes transactions related to a business contract that exists in Contracts+. The PO/CONTR# field (formerly the PO NBR field) will associate a specific contract number with the transaction. Associating payment transactions with contract numbers will enable CSUs and processing offices to use this information to create reports and reconcile contract spending more consistently and efficiently. This functionality also helps facilitate the development of future process enhancements.
How to use the new Contact? field
Enter an answer of Y for Yes to indicate the payment includes transactions related to a business contract that exists in Contracts+. If the document creator enters a Y in the Contract ? field, they are required to enter the contract number from Contracts+ in the field labeled PO/CONTR # at the transaction level on all relevant transactions. Once you enter Y in the Contact? field, the contract number entered into the PO/CONTR # field must be in one of the following Contracts+ formats in order to avoid receiving an error:
- YYYY_NNNN
- YYYY-NNNNN
- DMS_NNN
Enter an answer of N for No to indicate the payment does not include any transactions related to a business contract that exists in Contracts+. In this case the document creator should follow their normal processing practices and procedures. Some additional examples where N for No would be the appropriate response include business contracts with a contract ID that begins with the letters CN and research/construction contracts that are not entered into Contracts+.
Note: Contracts+ and non-Contracts+ transactions cannot be included in the same payment document. In this situation, you will need to create two separate payment documents. One document for the Contacts+ transactions and a second for the non-Contracts+ transactions.
Getting Help
Document creators can reference the entry Using the Contract? Field on VP2 or VPE in the askUS Knowledge Base for basic guidance on using the new field. Extensive guidance on creating payment documents as well as this change is also available through PF6 in *DEFINE. Field level help is available while engaged within the VP2 and VPE screen. Any local documentation regarding VP2 and VPE creation should be updated to reflect these new fields and processes.