Header

The Solicitation Response transaction inherits information from the Solicitation transaction to produce the structure for the vendor’s responses. For paper and fax responses, a buyer must enter the vendor’s response into all of the required fields. If a vendor returns a No Bid, then a response of No Bid must be entered and a reason provided in the Comments field. By entering a No Bid response, the system will recognize that the vendor at least participated in the Solicitation but choose not to bid on it. After entering the appropriate values click the Apply Default Values to Commodity Lines action to default the values to all lines. The values can be overwritten at the Commodity Level.

If this is the first transaction within a procurement folder, then on validate of a draft transaction, the system assigns a unique Procurement Folder ID on the procurement Header. Or if it is associated with another procurement transaction and that transaction was the first transaction within the Procurement Folder, then Procurement Folder, Procurement Type ID and Procurement Type fields are populated with inferred values on copy forward. When the Procurement Folder ID field is populated indicating that it is associated with a folder, the View Procurement Folder action is activated on the transaction Header allowing users to transition to the Procurement Management page to review other Procurement Folder information associated with this selected folder. Once the user has transitioned to the Procurement Management page a Back link is displayed allowing the user to transition back to the transaction Header where the transition began.

The following fields are required on the Header of the SR transaction:

• Vendor ID

• Response Date and Response Time - must be prior to the Solicitation's Close Date and Close Time.

If No Bid is selected as the Response Type, then the Comment field is required.

If the Allowed Vendor Type field on DCTRL is set to allow service vendors only:

• If the vendor(s) on the transaction have the Service flag checked on their vendor record, or have both the Service and Purchasing Agent flags checked, no error will be issued.

• If any vendor on the transaction has only the Purchasing Agent flag checked on their vendor record, an error will be issued.  

If the Allowed Vendor Type field on DCTRL is set to allow commodity vendors only:

• If the vendor(s) on the transaction have the Purchasing Agent flag checked on their vendor record, or have both the Service and Purchasing Agent flags checked, no error will be issued.

• If any vendor on the transaction has only the Service flag checked on their vendor record, an error will be issued.  

The Bond Details section is only available when Displayed Extension is set to Yes on Configure Page (DESIGNER). This new section contains additional fields to capture bond information with an external bonding system:

• Require E-Bond, Require E-Notary, Contract Number, Contractor ID, Bond ID, Valid Bond (Y/N), From Date, To Date, Miscellaneous Text 1, and Miscellaneous Text 2

• Solicitation Response transactions referencing Solicitations with Bond and/or Notary required, will prevent submission without Bond and/or Notary inclusion.

• Apply Default Values to Commodity Lines - This action automatically applies the value provided in the Default Values fields to all corresponding fields on all Commodity lines. The values can be changed on the Commodity tab for each individual Commodity line.

• Clarification Request - This action should be selected if any additional clarification on the information provided in the SR transaction is needed, either from an external vendor in VSS or from an internal source in Financial. This action is only allowed for finalized SR transactions whose corresponding Solicitation has closed. A clarification request is only allowed if any related Evaluation (EV) transactions are still in a Phase of Draft and no Award or EVT transaction has been created, meaning the evaluation is still on-going. This allows buyers and evaluators to ask for a clarification during the Evaluation process, after getting a chance to see all the loaded responses in one place. Although it modifies the finalized transaction, it does not update the Transaction Phase or Transaction Version of the transaction. When you select the Clarification Request action, you are taken to the Clarification Request page where you can insert a record to request additional information regarding the SR transaction.

• View Procurement Folder - This action transitions you to the Procurement Management page to review other Procurement Folder information associated with this selected Procurement Folder.