Customer Checklist For Ease Of Ordering
There are a variety of ways in which you can place your order with NHS Supply Chain, and we appreciate that it can be confusing.
If you are new to ordering or need a refresher, here are our top tips to ensure your orders can be as smooth as possible.
See our Downloads Section for a printable pdf to put up in your office.
Online Ordering
- Save orders if you will be leaving your computer for more than 10 minutes.
- Log out of your account when you have finished placing your order.
- Regularly review and update the Trust Administrators, User Maintenance/Authoriser roles.
- Consider reviewing products on your Standing Orders/Favourite lists on a regular basis.
- Consider reviewing your Masked products and Financial Coding.
- Review the Unsatisfied Requisition (Req) Lines report as soon as possible to understand unsatisfied demand or product information.
- We recommend not to use a saved favourite directly to the Online Ordering page as may cause caching issues. Saved favourite to our NHS Supply Chain main website is the best approach.
- Always ensure you have a Trust and Req point selected on your account before searching the catalogue or placing an order.
eDC
- Regularly update your Materials Management Database (MMD) and Stock/Local catalogues on the PDAs.
- Local Catalogue – If you maintain local lists (i.e. excel spreadsheets) these should be maintained regularly.
- Review non stock interfaces and ensure that planned changes are notified to NHS Supply Chain in due course.
- Put PDAs on charge when not being used.
- Review on a regular basis the configuration of Requirements and Req points.
EDI
- Regularly review order standards or methods to ensure the most up to date standards are being used. This would be XML/PEPPOL at the moment.
- Send orders to NHS Supply Chain before 16:00.
- Be fully aware of whom in the Trust receives either the TX (Order Acknowledgement) reports and/or status 200 messages with order updates.
- Review 3rd party systems to ensure all data is present and up to date (Delivery location, Req Points, Depots, Financial Coding etc.)
Catalogue Management 3rd party
- Customers not using catalogue providers who receive our catalogue either via a direct URL or FTP should be updating their systems every day.
- Make sure (be confident) your catalogue providers are updating the catalogues every day, the customers and/or providers should then make any changes to their systems as appropriate.
Customer Reports
- There are a number of useful customer reports available to the NHS, either online or via to be Customer Services.
- Reports available online:
- TR reports
- Suspended lines
- See our Useful Links to access or download the reports available online.
- Reports available via Customer Services:
- Unsatisfied lines
- Transaction errors
- Discontinued lines.
Useful Links
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Suspended Products On Our Online Catalogue
Access the reports availble to access or download through our online catalogue.
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eDC Gold
Our free inventory management solution helps with patient safety and unlocking GS1 potential.
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Supply Route
See all the information on our different supply routes.
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Product Availability
Access the latest product information when browsing or placing your order.