The following describes the business process that we will be using with BUworks and Sourcing to process requests for purchases through the Research Computing Services Buy-in Program.

After the researcher consults with the Research Computing Services technical staff to determine the purchase that best meets their needs, the researcher or the grant/departmental administrator should send us (Email to: buyin@rcs.bu.edu) the contact and financial information listed below:

Contact Information:

Include email, departmental address and phone number for:

  • Person Requesting Buy-in
  • Fund Approver (must be able to approve shopping carts and funding sources indicated below):
  • Back up Approver (in case primary person is away):

Financial Information:

  • All funding sources that should be charged: (one or more of the following)
    • Fund Center / Cost Center.
    • Internal Order.
    • Asset Account.
  • Splits if multiple funding sources are being used, please supply us either with a percentage or dollar breakdown of how costs should be distributed
  • General ledger account(s) you would like us to use.
    • In almost all circumstances orders will be considered a Capital Expense – 571400.  This also includes storage orders <$5,000.
  • For Grant based funding sources please indicate when the funding will expire.
    • We need to ensure that the funds can be invoiced in time.

Once we receive the contact and financial information listed above, we will generate one or more BUworks shopping cart(s). This shopping cart will show up in the BUworks worklist of each of the Fund Approvers associated with the items in the cart. Note that since we aggregate orders, the shopping cart may contain multiple items and have multiple Approvers. We will notify the Approvers that the shopping cart is ready for approval. The shopping cart will need to be approved by all Approvers before we can order any of the equipment.

The workflow of the shopping cart will be as follows:

Please note, particularly for grant funding, that we expect the equipment being purchased to constitute a capital equipment purchase and we will attach an internal note to that effect on the shopping cart before it is sent to Post Award Financial Operations and Asset Management for review.

We will notify the Requesters and Approvers once the equipment is delivered and the invoice released for payment.

Please send all information or questions to: buyin@rcs.bu.edu