Purchasing System Now Online

Purchasing System and Web-based Requisition System Now Online
by Katherine Bly

The Purchasing System of the Financial Management Information System (FMIS) has been implemented at all community colleges, University of Hawaii at Hilo, University of Hawaii-West Oahu, and the Employment Training Center for fiscal year 1999/2000. The Financial Management Office (FMO) purchased FMIS from Software AG of North America to replace the antiquated Fiscal Information System (FIS). FMIS is made up of many subsystems from the original product, plus in-house customized programs. Personnel from business and administrative offices at the community colleges and other sites access FMIS by connecting to the IBM mainframe at UH Manoa via a TN3270 connection.

With the Purchasing System in place, the Central Offices (OPPRM and the Disbursing Office) now have the capability of real-time account verification and budget checking when creating purchase orders. Real-time encumbrances are created against the purchase orders to reflect true account balances.

A Web-based Requisition System was also implemented for authorized field personnel such as secretaries and Principal Investigators. This application was designed with two goals in mind:

To provide the look and feel of creating a requisition as though it were being typed out on a typewriter
To allow printing of requisitions on any type of printer with minimal hardware and software requirements

The Web application performs account verification and transmits information to the FMIS Purchasing System. The appropriate business or administrative office processes the requisition and if approved, generates a hardcopy purchase order. The business office has the ability to deny processing of the requisition. In this case, the document must be modified and retransmitted.

End-users received training for the Requisition System in July 1999. The Web application has been in production since August 1999 with over 3500 requisitions created via the Web thus far.

Improvements to the Requisition System will continue to be made. Features to look for in the future include:

Ability to search for vendor information
Ability to perform document inquiries by requestor or document status
Real-time status of a document in the FMIS Purchasing System