Overview
Procurement in COMS is built around the Purchase Request (PR). A PR is the hub: everything else in a buy — the items you need, the bidders you invite, the RFQ/RFP you send them, the quotes that come back, the approvals, and finally the Purchase Order — hangs off it.
This chapter has four pages. Start here for the shape of the process, then go to the page that matches what you're doing:
- Purchase Requests — raise a PR, add items, get approvals, send the RFQ, mark it ready for purchase.
- Managing Bids & Vendor Submissions — add bidders, review what suppliers sent in, unlock a quote so a supplier can re-submit, pick the winner.
- Submitting a Bid (for Vendors) — written for the supplier. Safe to send outside Conexus.
Where to find it
| Tab | What it lists |
|---|---|
| Overview | Dashboard of counts and charts for the period you pick. Only visible to people with the “view all” procurement permission. |
| Purchase Requests | Every PR you're allowed to see. This is the main working list. |
| Purchase Orders | POs, including those raised from a PR. |
| All SSJs | Single Source Justifications across all PRs. |
| All RFXs | Every RFQ/RFP/RFI document across all PRs. |
| Quotes & Proposals | Every bid across all PRs — useful for “what has this vendor quoted us lately?” |
The Procurement Overview tab. Note the banner about currency — see the warning below.
⚠️ Heads up: Totals on the Overview tab are summed without currency conversion. If some bids or POs are in USD and others in CAD, the numbers are added together as raw figures. COMS says so on the page itself (“Amounts shown are estimates”). Treat them as rough indicators, not reportable financials. The same caveat applies to the Amount column and the “Amount (Low → High)” sort wherever bids are listed.
The life of a Purchase Request
A PR moves through four stages. The gauge at the top of every PR shows where it is:
| Stage | What it means | What you can still change |
|---|---|---|
| PR Created | The PR exists. You're building it up — items, bidders, RFQ, quotes. | Everything. |
| Bid Selected | You've marked one bid as the winner. | Most things. But the PR can no longer be deleted, and bid item costs are frozen for every bidder on the PR. |
| Ready For Purchase | You've declared the PR complete and handed it to procurement to buy. | Nothing. The PR and everything under it is locked. |
| PO Created | A Purchase Order has been raised from the PR. | Nothing. |
If an approval on the PR is rejected, the gauge drops back and shows REJECTED in red.
The progress gauge, Suggested Next Steps, the Bidder List approval track, and the selected bid.
Suggested Next Steps
COMS works out what the PR needs next and offers it as clickable chips in the dark panel at the top. You don't have to follow them, but they're the quickest route through, and they disappear one by one as you complete them. In order, they are:
| Chip | Appears when |
|---|---|
| Add items | The PR has no items yet. |
| Add bidders | The PR has no bidders yet. |
| Add SSJ | A non-competitive PR has bidders but no Single Source Justification. |
| Request bidder list approval | Bidders are added but not yet sent for approval. |
| Request SSJ approval | An SSJ exists but hasn't been sent for approval. |
| Generate/upload RFQ/P & send to bidders | A bidder has no quoted items yet and there's no RFX for them. |
| Upload quotes & update bid item costs | The RFX has gone out but the costs aren't in yet. |
| Select winning bid | Every bidder has quoted and no winner is chosen. |
| Mark as ready for purchase | There's a selected bid, the bidder list is approved, and (for non-competitive PRs) the SSJ is approved. |
ℹ️ Good to know: The Mark as ready for purchase chip is the one that tells you the PR has cleared everything it needs. If it hasn't appeared, something upstream is still outstanding — check the Bidder List and SSJ tracks in the hero.
Two approval tracks
Separately from the main stage, a PR carries up to two approval chains, each with its own little progress bar in the hero:
| Track | Applies to | States |
|---|---|---|
| Bidder List | Every PR. | Bidder(s) Added → Pending Bidder List Approval → Bidder List Approved (or Rejected) |
| SSJ | Non-competitive PRs only. | SSJ Added → Pending SSJ Approval → SSJ Approved (or Rejected) |
⚠️ Heads up: Once the Bidder List or the SSJ reaches Approved, the bidder list is frozen: you can no longer add, edit or remove bidders on that PR. Get the list right before you send it for approval. (Details: When bidder details freeze.)
Both tracks run through COMS's general Approvals module — see the Approvals chapter of this book for how requesting and deciding works.
Who can do what
Access is by role. The short version: procurement staff and managers see everything; everyone else sees the PRs they're connected to.
| Role | Can see | Can create | Can edit | Can delete |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| procurement-manager | All PRs | Yes | Any PR | Yes |
| procurement-staff | All PRs | Yes | Any PR | No |
| system-admin | All PRs | — | Any PR | No |
| finance-staff | All PRs (read-only) | No | No | No |
| program-manager / project-manager / program-area-manager | PRs in their own scope | Yes | In their scope | No |
| admin-assistant | PRs in their own scope | Yes | In their scope | No |
| staff (any Conexus staff member) | PRs they're connected to | Yes | PRs they raised | No |
| vendor-bidder (external supplier) | Only their own quotes, on the external portal | No | Their own unlocked quote | No |
ℹ️ Good to know: “PRs they're connected to” means: you raised it, or you manage its program, program area or project, or you've recorded an approval decision on it. Any Conexus staff member can open Procurement and raise a PR — they just won't see other people's PRs unless one of those connections applies.
super-admin bypasses all of the above. A few hard data-integrity guards still bind even super-admin though — a locked PR can't be deleted by anyone, and neither can its bids or RFXs.
What's different from BMS
If you know the BMS procurement process, the flow will feel familiar. These are the real differences:
| Topic | In COMS |
|---|---|
| Suppliers upload their own quotes | This is the big one. In BMS you received a quote by email and typed the numbers in yourself. In COMS the supplier gets a one-time link, enters their own line-item costs, and submits. Their quote then locks. See Quote locking and unlocking. |
| Bid comparison | There is no heatmap or comparison chart in COMS yet. To compare, sort the Bidders tab by “Amount (Low → High)”, or use the module-wide Quotes & Proposals tab. |
| Suggested Next Steps | New in COMS. The PR tells you what it still needs instead of you remembering the order. |
| RFX types | RFQ and RFP can be generated from a template, same as BMS. RFI can be uploaded and recorded but has no generator template — if you generate one it comes out on the RFP template. |
| Notes | Every PR has a Notes tab with per-note visibility (everyone / just me / selected staff). Notes are an audit record: editable for 24 hours, then permanent. |
| PR numbers | Format YY.NNN (e.g. 26.075), and PRs and POs draw from the same number pool for the fiscal year. A PR converted to a PO keeps its number. |
| Documents | Bid files uploaded in BMS still show up, marked from BMS and view-only. See Documents on a bid. |