Vendor Approval Request

Definition

A Vendor Approval Request is when a parent or ES identifies a business which either believes will be beneficial in assisting our student’s educationally by providing educational materials or educational services. It is the ES’s responsibility to submit the Vendor Approval Request through WEBfiles. (Webex )

Policy

The ES receives a Vendor Approval Request Form from a parent or they may initiate a request. The ES must gather all necessary information because they give the initial approval of the vendor before submitting the request to Vendor Relations.

When considering if this is an appropriate school vendor the ES needs to consider the following:

· Service Vendor: Vendor Instructor Policy; The extra requirements for High Risk vendors, as well as Restricted Activities School Restricted Additional Requirements

· Theme Park Guideline

· Product Vendor: Criteria of Materials That Can Be Purchased with Instructional Funds,

ESs are asked not to contact product vendors once they are on our approved vendor list, but they may call prospective product vendors to let them know that paperwork from IEM will be coming to initiate the vendor approval process.

You may need to initiate a new vendor request to reactivate an inactive vendor that is no longer on our approved vendor list.

Criteria for Educational Vendor Approval

An Educational Vendor must meet the following criteria before being approved as an IEM vendor.

· Vendor must sell non-denominational or non-sectarian materials and/or provide non-denominational or non-sectarian instruction

· Vendor must sell educational materials or provide educational activities.

· Vendor must complete the school vendor approval process in order to become a vendor for the school.

Procedure

· The ES receives a Vendor Approval Request Form from a parent or he/she initiates a request to provide materials or service to his/her student.

· The ES contacts the prospective vendor and gathers all the necessary information he/she will need in order to approve the vendor. (It is often helpful for the ES to contact the vendor to "pave the way" for the vendor approval paperwork that is going to be sent to them, as well as informing the vendor that someone from our business office will be contacting them.)

· The ES complete the Vendor Approval Checklist form and the Vendor Approval Request form while speaking with the vendor to be sure he/she has gather all the required information. (Keep the completed Vendor Approval Checklist in your files until the end of the school year the vendor became an Approved Vendor.)

· ES logs into ES WEBfiles and creates a Vendor Request through ES WEBfiles.

· Vendor Relations contacts the prospective vendor and after talking with the contact person sends the vendor the vendor packet.

· Our goal is to have the vendor approval process completed within two weeks.

· Once the vendor has completed and returned all required paperwork and it meets the school requirements, the vendor is marked in WEBfiles as an Approved Vendor.

· Vendor Relations notifies the ES the vendor is now an approved vendor and the ES may proceed with submitting a Service PO.

How to create a Vendor Request

• Log into ES WEBfiles
• Click on "CREATE"
• Choose from drop down list, “New Vendor Request”
• Fill out the information and choose “Email this Vendor Request” to submit your request

Follow up on Vendor Request

• Once Vendor Relations has begun to process the request, it will be viewable under View/Vendor Requests.
• Vendor Relations will make notes on this file so that the ES who created the request can see when various steps have been completed in the process.
• When the process is complete, the ES will receive an email notifying him/her that the vendor has been approved or denied.
• You will need to initiate a new vendor request to reactivate an inactive vendor that is no longer on our approved vendor list.
• Do not initiate a request for a vendor that has previously been denied.
• Click on the button in ES Webfiles and complete the form if you need to ask a question about your vendor request.