The new Smile Promotions BUY.IU catalog launched on May 28. All new orders with Smile Promotions must be placed using this catalog. This raised an important question:
How do faculty or staff who don’t use BUY.IU, but have traditionally worked directly with Smile, work with them now?
Purchasing recommends the following steps in this situation.
Step 1: Direct your faculty or staff to visit the Smile Promotions website and ask them to select the items they want. Ask them to email the details to whomever will be submitting the BUY.IU requisition. Remind them to include the name of the product(s) they want, as well as the colors, quantities, and sizes they need. They’ll also need to share what branding should be used on the items, if any.
Step 2: The person who will ultimately submit the requisition uses these details to build and submit a request for quote in the Smile Promotions BUY.IU catalog. They can review the Use the Smile Promotions Catalog page to learn how.
Step 3: Smile will review the request for quote and contact the requestor to discuss the artwork and any other recommendations they may have. At this point, the requestor should add the faculty or staff member who made the initial selections to the email thread so they may review and sign off on the quote.
Step 4: Once the details have been finalized, Smile will update the quote in BUY.IU. The quote submitter will be notified that the quote is available in the BUY.IU catalog. The submitter returns to the catalog, adds the quote to their BUY.IU cart, and completes the requisition.
Smile Promotions and Purchasing are aware this process isn’t ideal and are working towards a more streamlined solution for the future. In the meantime, the steps above allow your faculty and staff to continue working with Smile while following Purchasing’s requirement to use the BUY.IU catalog.