Home / BuyCarolina Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
BuyCarolina Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Did you know: All shopping carts must transfer to ConnectCarolina, where the shopper can enter/modify CFS, Shipping Locations, Budget Check, and gather department approvals (when applicable). Once these are completed, a requisition is created, which generates a Purchase Order. The Purchase Order is sent to the supplier(s) to fulfill. The transfer happens seamlessly when the shopper has an active ConnectCarolina authentication and clicks the “Transfer Cart” button from the BuyCarolina shopping cart. If your order does not transfer to ConnectCarolina, the order has not been created or submitted to the supplier for fulfillment.
Shopping Best Practices:
Ensure you are logged into a newly authenticated session.
Close all browser windows and log back into ConnectCarolina and BuyCarolina.
ConnectCarolina sessions will expire after 60 minutes of inactivity.
A pop-up window is presented to stay connected. If no action is taken, the session is expired. BuyCarolina shopping carts will not transfer to ConnectCarolina, and the order is not placed.
Where can I find my requisition: You can check the status of all open requisitions by logging into “Manage Requisitions” within ConnectCarolina Home-> Finance Menu -> eProcurement -> Manage Requisitions. If a BuyCarolina transaction is not found in Manage Requisitions, the order was not completed and has not been sent to a supplier. If the order is still needed, a new order will need to be placed.
BuyCarolina Landing Page: Check out the Alerts Section for the latest known technical issues, status, and workaround(s) if available.
Order Status Inquiries Contact jlsofo@email.unc.edu for further inquiries. Please provide your PO number and/or Requisition number found in Connect Carolina under Manager Requisitions for the order with the inquiry.
Click on the question to reveal the answer below.
If you have to adjust quantities on an already submitted purchase, do not contact the supplier. Create another order with the additional quantities.
The search only shows three suppliers based on the likelihood the supplier has the item you’re looking for in stock. Once the search results have returned, you can check other suppliers by clicking the Search all Suppliers link on the left side of the screen or you can go directly to that supplier’s catalog.
Some suppliers are not available in the search. You can find out which suppliers aren’t in the search results under the heading in the carousel announcements at the top of the BuyCarolina Home Page. Scroll and lick on the “Suppliers not included in OpenBuy search results”. You need to shop from their catalog directly by clicking their icon under Additional Stores to place your order. Remember, you can order from individual catalogs and from the search on the same requisition.
That depends. If you added the item from the search, you can change the quantity in your cart. If you added the item from an individual catalog or Amazon, you can’t change the quantity in your cart. You can delete the item from your cart and re-add with the correct amount as needed before transferring your cart to ConnectCarolina for approvals.
Yes. You can put items from your search in your shopping cart and then add items from individual catalogs to the cart so they’re all on the same requisition. Then you just transfer one shopping cart back into ConnectCarolina.
Yes. Purchase orders will be sent to individual suppliers. So, one BuyCarolina purchase requisition may result in multiple purchase orders. Also, keep in mind that if you change the shipping information on individual lines of the requisition, it results in multiple purchase orders.
No, because of the way it’s set up in BuyCarolina, Amazon’s results always show at the bottom of the page, separate from the other search results. If you use the “compare” feature to compare items from the search results, you won’t be able to include Amazon items to the list for comparison.
Maximum dollar amounts are per supplier, not per requisition. The maximum dollar amounts per supplier remain the same with BuyCarolina as they were with ePro.
It’s best to start with the search bar in BuyCarolina. If the search doesn’t return the item you’re looking for, then use the individual supplier’s catalog.
As we add more suppliers to BuyCarolina, we will have access to enriched purchase history data at the item level which may allow the Procurement Services team to negotiate deeper discounts.
Amazon is the only supplier that displays ship dates in BuyCarolina. The same is true for shipping charges. Amazon is the only supplier that displays shipping charges before you place an item in your cart.
Yes. Purchase Orders show at the line level when searching in the Managing Requisitions tab.
The suppliers display at the line level in the Manage Requisitions screen and you can click on the Purchase Orders icon to look at the PO information.
Some suppliers, but not all, display their representative’s contact information in their catalog. For those that do, you can find their contact information by clicking the supplier’s catalog under Additional Stores on the BuyCarolina home page. For all suppliers, you can find the representative’s name and contact information on the BuyCarolina page on the Finance website.
If you need to make changes to an existing order, create a new Purchase Order with the changed products. Work with the supplier to issue a credit for existing ordered products that shipped or that need to be cancelled for unshipped product only. Please include eproviders@unc.edu to help with cancellations of unshipped products.
