REQUISITIONING PROCEDURE - 3550

Purchase estimates are initiated by the State agency to effect purchases, to provide management and the central budgetary authority with budgetary control over purchases, to serve as a formal requisition upon the Office of Procurement, Department of General Services, for agency purchases, and to provide an accounting record of purchases in process.

Agencies will contact the Office of Procurement, Department of General Services, early in the purchase process in order to benefit from advice and assistance on specifications, sources of supplies, price advantages, substitutions, and a determination of the agency's precise needs. Agencies that write to vendors for information to price purchase estimates will inform the vendors that the information requested is for accounting purposes and is not a request by the Office of Procurement for quotations. Agency titles which may be interpreted as relating to the Office of Procurement will not be used with signatures on agency request for prices. Agencies will write for price information to enter on estimates only when the balance in the allotment is such that this procedure is necessary to ensure that the allotment will not be truly over-encumbered by the purchase estimate. The agency should anticipate its needs and accumulate those needs to warrant quantity purchases. Special requests to the Office of Procurement and over-stocked inventories maintained by the individual agency increase the costs of State operation and will not be permitted unless properly justified.