The business had identified the need to optimize the Procure to Pay process with a tool that would allow the creation of Purchase Requests, Purchase Orders, 3-way invoice matching, vendor payments, and accounting protocols for SOX Compliance.
The business decided to move forward with the implementation of Coupa for the Procurement and Payment Program. Coupa provides these functionalities within one platform and is integrated to decrease procurement approval turn-times and reduce manual workflow delays.
Coupa is a cloud-based purchasing and payment platform that will be used by GitLab as of 2021-06-01 for the US and Netherlands entities and as of 2021-12-13 for remaining entities. It has an easy-to-use interface that will improve the way suppliers connect with GitLab. All new purchase orders, invoices and communications will be managed through the Coupa Supplier Portal.
Coupa is available via Okta. To access the platform:
Please note that every month all Coupa access will be reviewed and users who haven't been active in a period of 90 days will have their access removed. (Note that this number may vary depending on the license count for the current month)
If you need to request access again, please reopen your initial Access Request issue and tag the Finance Systems Admins team using @gitlab-com/business-technology/enterprise-apps/financeops
in a comment.
If your job function requires you to submit purchase requests in Coupa, follow the below steps:
Individual_Bulk_Access_Request
template.Best Practices
Due to the limited number of licenses available for Coupa, it is recommended that each department identify power users responsible for creating purchase requests on the team’s behalf.
Account Name contains a number of options related to managing your account in Coupa:
For each type of notification, the User can choose whether to receive notifications via email, Slack, or within Coupa (Online) and can select multiple platforms.
Assigned delegates must be of an equivalent or greater management level.
For approvals as part of an approval group, the individual must be a member of that group.
Anytime you are challenged for a 2FA verification code, just launch your authenticator and enter the latest code.
For Field Marketing Dept Only - please refer to the Field Marketing Handbook - Allocadia to understand how to create Coupa requisitions directly from Allocadia.
If a supplier is exclusively paid by credit card, please see How to Request a Coupa Virtual Card for instructions.
REQUISITION HEADER LEVEL
If an invoice is attached, it will also need to be emailed to ap@gitlab.com for processing.
@security
and @procurement
groups in a comment before submitting the requisition for approval.NOTES
@taxinvoiceapproval
group in a comment before submitting the requisition for approval.
REQUISITION LINE LEVEL
If the item being purchased requires a class/campaign tag, the user needs to manually add it after adding the line item to the request but before submitting the PR.
The class field is located in the Billing String
section which only appears to the user after the line item has been added to the request.
To add a class, follow the below steps for more detail:
clas - Class
field and click "Choose" when done.NOTES
NOTES
Once all the required information (including the billing string) is populated on the cart, based on the system approval rules, the applicable approvers are displayed beneath the cart line.
The greater the amount of the requisition, the more approvers will be needed.
There are several ways to approve transactions in Coupa:
Once Slack notifications are activated you can choose what type of notifications you want to receive via slack. To specify notifications that should be received in slack please go to Settings - Notifications - mark "IM" boxes.
Below is an example of the approval notification in Slack:
NOTE
Users can copy requisitions so they do not have to re-create the same order details multiple times again.
Notes
Provided that a Purchase Requisition has not been approved and flipped into an Order, the user can withdraw the Purchase Request and make any changes before submitting again.
NOTES
Receiving is only required for an item-based (quantity) requisition.
NOTES
There may be scenarios where a receipt needs to be voided (e.g. an incorrect receipt was made).
IMPORTANT NOTES
As Central Receiver, follow the below steps:
Requesters can take certain actions to manage their orders.
Click here for a quick video showing how to request a Purchase Order change for an amount increase.
Under Activity > Orders, the requestor can click on Supplier Print View to print or re-send a Purchase Order to another email address of their choosing.
A supplier must exist in Coupa prior to submitting a requisition for that supplier. To complete a New Supplier Request form:
The Professional Services Request form must be filled out before creating a requisition for any professional services related purchase. To complete the Professional Services Request form:
The user can now proceed with the creation of the purchase request by adding the remaining details to the line item.
For further instructions on the invoicing and payment modules in Coupa, please visit the following links:
For futher instructions on how to request a virtual card in Coupa, please visit the below links to the guide or training video:
All Coupa related videos can be found in our "Coupa" playlist on youtube.
For any Coupa requests, open an issue using the Coupa Request
template.
If your request involves a change to the current business process, either the Procurement and/or Accounts Payable Team will have to approve it depending on the type of request.
If you have an urgent issue, send a message to the #coupa_help slack channel explaining what you need. The Enterprise Apps team will help determine what is the best process to solve the request.