About UT Market
UT Market, a subsystem of the Financial Resource Management System (FRMS), is an electronic procurement system that enables shoppers to browse for products across multiple suppliers, select items for purchase by placing them into a include shopping cart, and assign the cart to an authorized departmental buyer. Buyers make the decision to check carts out of UT Market and then turn them into requisitions in FRMS Procurement or submit them as orders to internal suppliers. Final approved requisitions are then electronically dispatched to suppliers as purchase orders.
Authorized departmental shoppers and buyers enter UT Market from the eCommerce tab in FRMS: https://utdirect.utexas.edu/apps/frms/utmarket/ecommerce/.
Orders initiated through UT Market result in many benefits to the department:
- Interactions with suppliers are electronic. This eliminates the need to call, e-mail, or fax suppliers to get quotes, or to inform them of approved purchase orders.
- When purchase orders are electronically received, suppliers immediately begin processing orders for shipment. This greatly reduces the amount of time it takes a supplier to fill an order.
- Because details about items to be ordered are received directly from the supplier, less data entry is required on UT Market orders.
- Items are still shipped to either Central Receiving or directly to the department. Regardless of where items are delivered, all invoices and payments for UT Market purchase orders will be processed by Accounts Payable in Payment Services. Orders from internal suppliers are paid via the IDT (VT5) process. The payment process is initiated by the internal supplier.
Buyers and Shoppers in UT Market
Buyers are users who are authorized to create electronic requisition documents in FRMS Procurement. Buyers are authorized to check out carts in UT Market and turn them into electronic requisition documents in FRMS Procurement or into orders to internal suppliers.
Shoppers are users who can browse product catalogs in UT Market but do not have authorizations to create electronic requisition documents. They can create and put items into carts, but those carts must be routed to a departmental buyer in order for them to become orders.
Each department must determine how UT Market carts will be routed before they are assigned to the departmental buyer. For example, a department may choose to have staff members create and put items into a cart, then assign the cart to a supervisor for review. The supervisor can review or edit the shopping cart and then assign it to the department's buyer. The buyer would then check out the cart from UT Market and turn it into an electronic requisition document or into an order to an internal supplier. Contact a department’s buyer for more information about that department’s procurement procedures.