As the Controller’s Office announced on January 13th, UCOP and all campuses are moving to a new Common Chart of Accounts that is standardized across the UC system. 

In order to align with the new standard, UC Berkeley will be implementing updates to the Berkeley Financial System and BearBUY in a Spring Release that affect the Chart of Accounts. BearBUY has scheduled downtime from Thursday, May 26th at 5:00 PM and will resume normal business operations on Tuesday, May 31st at 8:00 AM. BFS will have a similar scheduled downtime.

During the spring release, there will be two changes visible to BearBUY users:

New Business Unit field in BearBUY

In alignment with the Chart of Accounts updates coming this May, a new required field for Business Unit will be added to BearBUY. In order to minimize the impact to the campus, the Berkeley (10000) business unit will default to all user profiles. Departments that use the UC Business Unit (J0000) will need to select that unit for all transactions. 

Check out the new job aid for the Business Unit field in BearBUY!

Students and Employees as Vendors removed from BearBUY

During this spring release, additional updates will be made to BearBUY and BFS to support streamlining financial operations and managing business units. One of the changes associated with this update is that we will remove students and employees as suppliers in BearBUY. Please use the appropriate financial solutions to reimburse students and employees noted below. Unapproved requisitions, purchase orders, and payments to students and employees in BearBUY as of May 26th will be canceled.  Departments will have to re-enter these in the appropriate reimbursement system to be paid. If the payment has already been approved and exported to BFS by May 26th, then there is no impact.

For Petty Cash custodians, we will be reaching out to you in the next few days to evaluate if there might be other more secure payment methods, including one of the Procurement Cards we currently offer, and/or the Human Subject Prepaid Card that could satisfy the same purpose as the petty cash fund.  If ultimately it is determined that a specific petty cash fund needs to remain in place, then they will need to go through the supplier onboarding process.

• In most cases, payments to students or employees are already generated from sources other than BearBUY. 
• There is no impact to financial aid payments coming from the Student Information System (SIS) or compensation to employees or students coming from UCPath. 
• There is no impact to the reimbursement system, which should already be used for most student and employee reimbursements.

Going forward, if a student or employee requires a payment that cannot be accommodated in the reimbursement system, SIS or UCPath, they will need to go through the supplier onboarding process, including a conflict of interest form with every transaction.

BearBUY is intended for the purchase of goods and services. In the exceptional cases when Berkeley purchases from an employee or student, that department must seek a Conflict of Interest exemption and require the student or employee to go through the supplier onboarding process prior to creating a purchase order. This change is scheduled to be implemented by Tuesday, May 31st. If you have any questions about this change, you can reach out to supplychain@berkeley.edu or vcfinance@berkeley.edu.

SCM is pleased to announce a new form in BearBUY! On May 30, 2022, the new Blanket Purchase Order form will be available for use. 

Please see the new job aid on Using the Blanket Purchase Order form for assistance and the Blanket Purchase Orders web page for details.

It is University of California policy to prioritize the use of employees to perform functions and services for cleaning, custodial, janitorial or housekeeping services; food services; laundry services; groundskeeping; building maintenance; transportation and parking services; security services; billing and coding services; sterile processing; hospital or nursing assistant services; and medical imaging or other medical technician services. Contracting with 3rd party vendors, suppliers and contractors should be limited and only when certain exceptions apply.

Departments requesting to contract-out for work customarily performed by UC bargaining unit employees, whether in whole or in part, must submit a "Request to Contract Out for Covered Services Form"  prior to entering into a contract or issuing a Purchase Order a the supplier/vendor that provides "Covered Services."

For more information, please visit Supply Chain Management’s Contracting Out for Covered Services webpage to ensure your service agreements will be compliant with university policy. For any questions regarding this process and policy, please email art5_scm@berkeley.edu.

On May 1, 2022, Office Depot changed their legal name to ODP Business Solutions LLC. Support and sales contacts at Office Depot remain the same.

• ePro PunchOut Redirect: The redirect in eCommerce to the new ODP punchout (when campus shoppers punchout to OD), occurred on May 1st. 
• Email Domain Change: The email domain changeover (to @odpbusiness.com) has not yet occurred. Campus will be updated when it happens. The old email addresses will still function for a time.
• Business Name on Invoices: As of May 1s, the BearBUY invoices from ODP will contain the Business Name of ‘ODP Business Solutions’, not Office Depot.

Please be advised that Microsoft will retire Internet Explorer on June 15, 2022 and plan on using a different browser such as Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla FireFox, etc. when using BearBUY. Internet Explorer will no longer work in Windows 10 and will not exist in Windows 11.