Department of Purchasing

Notice to All Suppliers:

SCAM FRAUDULENT PURCHASE ORDERS

The University of Akron's Purchasing Department would like to alert the community to a nationwide fraud scam that is targeting suppliers for colleges across the country. Please take precautions so that you are not a victim of this scam.

The email scam involves purchase orders and requests for product quotations that purport to originate from the University, but are in fact fraudulent. The FBI could be involved.

Departmental Information:

Please be sure the view the Policy and Procedure Tutorial on Brightspace. Visit “my Akron”, log in with your uakron email and password, choose Brightspace, and then click “Discover”.

Now that we have the new P Cards from Bank of America Merrill Lynch, there are some unfamiliar nuances that we would like to share with the departments:

Important notes when using the P Card:

PIN codes are important with this new P Card. You should have established on when you activated your new card. If you are given the option to use the PIN when making purchases, please do so, or your card may be declined.

Reconciling Transactions in Works:

Once you “Sign Off” on the transaction, you cannot make changes to the transaction. However, your Approver could “flag” your transaction, prior to their “Sign Off” so that you could make the correction. If you do have a flagged transaction, please be sure to “Remove Flag” so we know the correction has been made.

In addition, it is very important to “Sign Off” on your transactions in a timely manner, as they appear in your account. Not only for our accounting purposes, but also BAML will NOT release your funds, or allow the limits to be changed if you do not “Sign Off” on your transactions every 2 weeks. You can tell you have signed off properly if “AH” (Account Holder) appears under the “Sign Off” column.

Fraud Alerts: The Fraud Alert registration is not that user-friendly, but we do have a few instructions that might help

You WILL need to create an account. This is separate from your card activation.
Select “Register a Card”.
Use VC (Verification Code) NOT the PIN number you created when activating the card.
Once you are logged in, select “Alerts”.
Create contact – either email or cell phone.
Click on “Settings” to set alerts.
Recommended Alerts: Suspicious Activity; Transaction Activity by Amount and by Merchant Country; Account Activity – Available Credit Remaining.