Creating a requisition: Buying goods and services

Creating a requisition in My Oracle is similar to most online ordering websites, in that you will need to create a shopping basket or cart for the goods or services you wish to buy.

A requisition is the term used for getting internal permission to buy goods or services. All council colleagues can create requisitions in My Oracle to begin making a purchase.

Once completed, your requisition needs to be submitted for approval.

Once approved, your requisition will generate a purchase order (PO), which indicates the types, quantities and agreed prices for products or services required. This will be sent electronically by My Oracle to your supplier.

You will have both a requisition number reference and a PO number reference for your purchase, and these can be found in My Oracle.

Set your requisition preferences

A requisition will automatically populate your delivery location, subjective and cost centre.

If you regularly purchase items on behalf of others, you may wish to amend your default delivery address or account code. This can be done by selecting ‘Procurement’ on the My Oracle menu, then ‘Purchase Requisitions’ and selecting the pencil icon next to your name.

A pop-up box will appear and allow you to alter your default shipping and delivery information and set your ‘favourite charge accounts’.

Further instructions on how to do this can be found in the set a requisition preferences guidance in the My Oracle Hub.

Types of requisitions

There are multiple requisition types to choose from depending on the type of purchase you are making.

Catalogues

Catalogues are lists of items hosted within My Oracle that have specific prices agreed with suppliers relevant to the council. Catalogues contain accurate pricing, images, stock availability and other information to help with your decision making.

Catalogues examples include stationery, books, cleaning equipment, furniture and IT peripherals. Check My Oracle if to see if there is a catalogue that suits your buying needs.

Instructions on how to do this can be found in the raise a catalogue requisition guidance in the My Oracle Hub.

Request forms

Request forms are internally created forms with pre-populated information which help to guide you through creating a requisition for a particular type of purchase. This helps to save time when buying the same goods or services frequently. The most used request forms are:

• Non Catalog – Amount
• Non Catalog – Quantity

Non-catalogue requisitions

Non-catalogue requisitions can be used when there is no item available to buy from a catalogue. They are typically used for non-standard goods or services, such as when you have carried out a procurement process for low risk purchases between £10,001 (ten thousand and one) and £100,000 (one hundred thousand).

Where you have carried out a procurement process and awarded a contract to a supplier, you should attach your supporting documentation to your requisition. The documents will be kept as a record against the requisition and may be audited to confirm compliance with the procurement process.​​ 

Goods are usually bought by their quantity, whereas services are usually bought by their amount (£ value). All pricing needs to be entered as NET values (before VAT).

You will need to give your goods or service a suitable proclass category (XLSX, 36KB) from the council's list. As well as allowing reporting on what the council is spending, this also determines part of the budget code used on your requisition.

Do not add VAT to your requisition.

Instructions on how to do this can be found in the how to raise a non-catalogue requisition guidance in the My Oracle Hub.

If you need to purchase specific goods or services regularly

If you have a business need to purchase specific goods or services regularly, contact the P2P team and raise a request for a new request form template to be created.

Contact the P2P team through the Assyst portal by selecting ‘Financial Services’ and then ‘Purchase to Pay (P2P)’.

Long duration purchases

If the service you are purchasing is intended to last a long period of time, please raise your requisition to last the life of the service or contract. My Oracle will allow a PO to run over multiple years.

Sensitive and personal data

All council employees can search and view orders in My Oracle. This means you should:

• ​understand what sensitive and personal data is and how you are expected to treat it
• always follow best practice when creating requisitions and consider whether your descriptions and attachments are appropriate

If you have an invoice from a supplier and it has any of this information, speak to them and advise them that they should not include this in future as they should be aware of these regulations.

Find out more about Working with personal data.