Regional Guidelines for Procurement and Inventory Management

Procurement/Purchasing Cycle

The purchasing cycle can be divided into the Pre-Award, Contract Administration and Post-Award processes. The cycle consists of the following steps:

• Identification/recognition of need and accurate description of commodity or service.
• Evaluation of source.
• Selection of supplier and agreeing a contract.
• Receipt and release of supplied items.
• Continuous measurement of performance of suppliers and management of suppliers performance and needs.

See Figure 1 for the Procurement/Purchasing Cycle.

The approach in the following sections of the guideline is to take the essential elements identified in the Pre-Award, Contract Administration and Post- Award parts of the cycle and indicate the sub-elements that constitute these.