Procurement planning

Procurement planning is where you build and run your annual procurement plan. Open it from Tools → Planning in the top bar. Each year has its own plan, made of plan lines: one line for each purchase you intend to make, with its value, CPV codes, planned period, owner, and procedure.

The module is shared by the whole organization. Only the agent runs cost credits; everything else is free.

Setting up planning

The first time anyone opens Planning, it shows a short buyer profile form:

• How does your organization buy? — under public procurement law, or as a private company with your own rules.
• Registration number — your organization's number, used to find your own published notices and contracts.
• Country — Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, or another EU country.
• Procurement regime — the law your purchases fall under. Latvia offers general public procurement, utilities, and defence and security; each of the other countries has one. Not asked for a private company.
• Authority level — central government, or a municipality or other authority. Asked outside Latvia, because central government bodies have a lower EU threshold for supplies and services. Not asked for a private company.

Click Activate planning to finish. The threshold bands and checks all depend on this profile.

Only an owner or admin can activate planning. Anyone else sees a note asking them to ask an owner or admin, and every other planning page leads back to this form until planning is activated. An owner or admin can correct the profile later from ⋯ → Buyer profile at the top of the register.

Private companies

If your company buys with its own rules, choose As a private company, with our own rules when you set up planning, or tick Private company under Workspaces on your account's Organization page. Both places change the same setting.

Planning then skips the public procurement checks: threshold bands, procedures, mandatory fields, plan publication and the statutory exports (the EIS layout and the CVP IS summary). It still warns about overdue lines and workload, and the plan check reviews your plan for duplicates, timing, value basis and purchases you could bundle for better terms.

Mark a line Publicly funded (EU, state or municipal) when public money pays for it. In Latvia such a line is checked against Cabinet Regulation No. 104 (MK 104): its value bands and the ban on splitting a purchase. Outside Latvia the line gets a reminder to check your funding agreement's purchasing rules.

New tenders you publish start with A private company selected in their rules. You still answer the funding question for each tender.

Groups, buying rules, approvals, renewals and the Spending view are described in Private-company purchasing.

The plan register

The register shows one plan year at a time. Pick the year from the menu next to the Procurement plan title, and switch between Register and Roadmap at the right of the filters.

A line under the title sums up the year: the plan status (Draft or Approved), the number of lines, their total value excluding VAT, the share planned for the first half of the year, and the publication deadline. Owners and admins also find Approve plan there.

Each line shows its title with its CPV code and contract type underneath, its value excluding VAT, its procedure (or its threshold band while no procedure is chosen), its period and needed-by date, owner, status, and any checks it raised.

Search by text, or narrow the list with the filter buttons: Status, Quarter, Type, Owner, Band, Tags and CPV. A department filter appears when your organization uses departments. Each button opens a list of choices showing how many lines each one would leave; tick several and they apply together when the list closes. Clear filters removes them all.

To change many lines at once, tick them. A bar appears at the bottom of the screen with Add tag, Owner, Quarter and Status.

Adding a plan line

Click New line. A short form asks only what most lines need: what you are buying, the contract type, the value of the whole contract excluding VAT (including options and extensions), when it will be announced (a quarter or a month, or Not known yet), and the CPV codes. Use Pick CPV codes to choose them; the first code is the main CPV.

While you enter the value and contract type, a hint below the value shows the threshold band and the suggested procedure for your jurisdiction and the plan year. Click Add line and the line appears in the register.

For everything else, click Open the full form. It keeps what you typed and adds the description and scope, value basis and funding, plan year, needed-by date, contract duration and recurrence, owner, department and tags, and the procurement route and procedure. You can also fill these in later with Edit on the line.

The full form asks How will you buy? in everyday words: Direct purchase or price survey, Simple procurement or Open tender, each with its legal name underneath, and marks the one your value suggests as Suggested. The law's other procedures sit under Other procedure, and the procurement route, Annex XIV services and country flags under More settings. Department lists the groups set up in Settings → Members; until there are any, owners and admins see a link to add them.

Requests from colleagues

Colleagues who need something bought do not have to fill in a plan line. Open the menu next to New line and choose Request a procurement: it asks only what is needed, why, by when, a rough value, and the department.

Requests and lines proposed by the agent wait above the register, in one line that says how many are awaiting your decision. Click Review to see them. Accept moves a request into the plan as a planned line; Decline removes it. Select several and use Accept selected or Decline selected to handle them together.

Working with a line

Open a line to see its details, its checks, findings from the latest plan check, comments for the team, and a history of every change. A line under the title shows its status, band, period, value, owner, and whether a procurement has started.

The main action on a planned line is Start procurement. Next to it are Edit and the ⋯ menu with:

• Research the market
• Postpone to one of the next three years, or Postpone without a date
• Mark completed or Cancel line
• Delete. A line that already has a procurement cannot be deleted; cancel it instead.

Checks as you plan

The register checks every line as you work, at no cost. The Checks column shows how many warnings a line has; click it to read them. Warnings include, for example:

• a procedure below the line's value band, or a band that cannot be worked out
• missing fields the published plan needs, or a value without a basis
• a lead time below the benchmark, or a planned period that has already passed
• a recurring contract that should be valued over twelve months
• lines in the same CPV group that together reach a higher band
• a chance to shorten the tender period with a prior information notice

The first-half share in the line under the title turns orange when most lines are planned for the first half of the year.

On the line page, Fix next to a warning opens the form at the field to fill in, and Use next to the suggested procedure sets it in one click.

Seeding and checking with the agent

Two agent runs go further than the built-in checks. Both start from the AI menu, both cost credits, and only one can run at a time in your organization.

• Seed plan proposes lines for the year from your expiring contracts, your recurring purchases, and plan files you select from your Library. Only .xlsx tables are read row by row. Every line is a proposal: it waits above the register, like a colleague's request, until you accept or decline it.
• Check plan reviews the year's register against the procurement rules: artificial splitting, threshold and procedure fit, lead times, prior information notices and market consultation, mandatory fields, and publication deadlines.

A check produces findings ranked Critical, Major, Minor, or Info, each with a recommendation, evidence, and links to the lines it concerns. Dismiss a finding that does not apply or Resolve it once fixed. The AI menu links to the latest check, the line under the title links to its open findings, and each line page lists the findings that name it.

The roadmap

Roadmap lays out the planned and started lines of the year in one column per quarter, with a line count, total value, and each owner's workload. Two extra columns collect Overdue lines, whose planned period has passed, and Unscheduled lines with no period yet. Use Move to on a card to move a line to another quarter.

Approving and publishing the plan

Owners and admins manage the plan itself:

• Approve plan, in the line under the title, approves the year and stamps every planned line as approved.
• ⋯ → Plan settings holds Budget approved on, Notes and, when your organization uses budget groups, the year's budgets. For Latvia, the publication deadline is counted from the budget approval date.
• Lines added or moved into the plan after approval are amendments. They show as Amendment, not yet approved until you use Approve amendments in the line under the title for all of them, or Approve amendment on a single line.
• ⋯ → Record publication, with the address where you published the plan, marks the approved lines as published. The line under the title then counts any later changes, so you can tell when the published plan is out of date.

Exporting

Export downloads the plan as an Excel file in one of these layouts:

Tick Statutory lines only to leave out lines whose value is below the level at which they must appear in the published plan. The CVP IS summary always contains only these lines. The Latvian EIS layout leaves the value out unless you tick Include value.

A private company has no statutory plan, so it gets only All fields and Approved plan for signature, without Statutory lines only.

From plan line to procurement

When a planned line is ready, Start procurement creates a procurement workspace from it, with the line's subject, scope, CPV, value, period, and procedure as the description. The line becomes Started, and the workspace links back to it. From there, continue with setting up the procurement.

Research the market opens a new market research run with the line's details as the brief. See Market research.

Who can do what

See Roles and permissions.

Credits

Seed plan and Check plan are charged by actual usage and appear in your credit history. Everything else in planning, including the built-in checks and exports, is free. See Credits and pricing.