WashU Marketplace FAQs

General

The WUSTL Marketplace is a web-based electronic requisition purchasing program.

Washington University has contracted with SciQuest, the leading provider of electronic procurement solutions for higher education, to develop this program to interface with our financial system. The Marketplace provides:

  • A web-based requisitioning tool using online supplier catalogs and a “shopping cart” format.
  • Staff can submit fax or email requisitions to create and submit electronic requisitions.
  • Ability to eliminate redundant requisition data entry and reduce associated errors with a manual process.
  • Ability to “punch out” to searchable supplier catalogs providing product details and contract pricing.
  • Ability to shop and compare items within the hosted supplier catalogs.
  • Ability to create a “favorites” list for frequently ordered items.
  • Order acknowledgment and status via emails.
  • Order history information.

The program is customized to interface with the university’s financial system. Current business rules and budget controls will remain in place.

Marketplace User

Marketplace Roles

There is terminology associated with Marketplace.

Shopper – A person that may initiate an order by creating a shopping cart requisition. (e.g., a lab researcher)

Reviewer – A person that approves a requisition. (e.g., Lab supervisor/PI). *NOTE: This is an optional function, as not all departments have this requirement.

Requisitioner – A person that historically entered the order in Workday. This person can also serve as a departmental shopper.

Marketplace document workflow

The document workflow looks different for Marketplace requisitions

  1. A user logs into the Marketplace and creates a shopping cart
  2. After creating the shopping cart, the purchase requisition (PR) routes either for an initial review or to the individual that finishes the PR with appropriate account codes, etc. Once the PR moves to Workday, no changes can be made to the document.
  3. The PR routes to Workday for additional approvals (department, general accounting, SPA, etc.).​
  4. The PR routes to Purchasing for final approval. A supplier that receives “auto-approval” from Purchasing skips this step.
  5. The PO is created and is immediately transmitted to the supplier.
  6. The final PO information is then exported back to Workday.
Email notifications setup

To set up email notifications:

  1. From Marketplace, click on the “profile” link next to your name in the upper left corner of the page.
  2. Click on the “email preferences” tab.
  3. Select “PO pending Workflow approval” by clicking the appropriate box.
  4. Click the “Save” button.
Hosted and Punch-out catalogs?
  • Hosted catalogs are contained within Marketplace and can be used for a generic search when either the specific supplier is unknown or the shopper wants to search and compare items from multiple sources.
  • Punch-out catalogs link directly to WashU/Supplier-specific sites and are used when the shopper knows which supplier to use to make a purchase and wishes to use the extra functionality of the supplier’s punch-out site.
  • Level II Punch-out catalogs mean that many of the Supplier’s products will display when you conduct a general ‘everything’ search within Marketplace.

The Punch-out catalogs will offer every item that the supplier distributes while the hosted catalog is generally a sub-set of items most commonly ordered by the university.

Shopping carts

We recommend renaming your cart in order to more easily locate that cart from your cart list. You can use any naming scheme you want that helps you find it at a later time. Most users utilize the supplier name along with some other identifier such as the lab name.

Adding items to a PR

There are a couple of methods you can use to accomplish this task:

Option 1: Make the pending PR your “active” cart

  1. Click on the “cart” tab.
  2. Click the “draft carts” tab.
  3. Select the cart you wish to use.
  4. Shop for the items needed and place them in your active cart.

Option 2: Place items in your existing active cart and then move them to a new cart

  1. From the drop-down box, select “add to draft cart or pending pr.”
  2. Click “Go.”
  3. Select which cart you wish to use.
  4. Click the “Add” button.
Withdrawing requisitions
  1. Open the requisition.
  2. From the drop-down box, select “Withdraw entire requisition” and then “Go”. (If the PR has moved from Marketplace to Workday, this step will not be available to use.)
  3. If the PR is back in Marketplace with only Purchasing approval remaining, contact Purchasing to delete the PR.
  4. If the vendor has the completed PO, cancel the order directly with the supplier.
Deleting Orders

You must first delete the document in Workday. Deleting the document in AIS should cause the Marketplace PR to reject it. In Marketplace, you can disregard it or copy it to a new cart.

Should you have a question not covered here, please email us.