NCEP 2020 Upgrade Vendor Information

When is the NC eProcurement Upgrade happening?

The new system will go live on July 1, 2020.

How does the upgrade affect vendors?

1. Purchase Order Email Delivery Changes

All orders will now be sent via the Ariba Network, meaning that orders after go live will have a different email format. More information on the new format can be found on our New Email Format page.

Vendors may decide to sign up for a Supplier account with the Ariba Network, which offers additional benefits:

  • Respond to quote requests from buyers
  • Order Confirmations
  • Shipping Notifications
  • Accessing previous purchase orders

Vendors are not required to sign up for the Ariba Network in order to do business with the state of North Carolina.

2. New Purchase Order Tax Field

NC eProcurement entities are tax exempt but others, including Community Colleges and School Systems, are still taxable. After the upgrade, NC eProcurement orders from non-tax-exempt entities will have an additional field: “GRAND TOTAL AMOUNT INCLUDING TAX AND OTHER COSTS.”

This field calculates the tax and any designated other costs to generate a new Grand Total for the order.

The dollar amount in this new field is the new total amount vendors should use for invoicing. See the New Tax Field page for more information on these changes.

3. electronic Vendor Portal (eVP) Changes

Because of the addition of new Contracts and Sourcing components to the NC eProcurement purchasing system, there will be some updates made to the electronic Vendor Portal.

  • All vendors registered to receive purchase orders from the State of North Carolina will be required to log in and confirm the user that has been designated as the new Sourcing and Contracts contact on their account, and update this user contact information if needed.
  • The Sourcing and Contracts contact(s) will receive messages and be assigned to respond to tasks as a part of Sourcing, Contracts, and Quoting events. Instructions on assigning a user can be found in the FAQs below.

4. New Commodity Code System

The state has decided to switch their commodity code system from NIGP to UNSPSC. This switch will not take place until after the upgrade goes live on July 1.

Vendors registered in eVP will have their selected commodity codes converted to the UNSPSC code system. Vendors should log in to their account at vendor.ncgov.com to verify that the new codes associated with their company are correct.

5. Dual-Processing

After go live July 1, there will be a period of time where the old system is still operating, called Dual-Processing. During this time, buyers will close out old orders and recreate them as needed in the new system.

Vendors may see email cancellations of ongoing orders from the older system and recreations of the those orders in the new system and email format.

What do vendors need to do right now?

All vendors should log into their company’s eVP account at vendor.ncgov.com and confirm that their company, contact, and ordering/billing information is up to date.

Vendors should wait to receive their first order in the new email format after the upgrade on July 1, and click the Process Order link at the top to access their Ariba account or begin the process of creating an Ariba Network account.

To see other changes happening across the NC eProcurement system with this upgrade, check out the NCEP 2020 Upgrade Information page!