Dear Campus Community,

Supply Chain Management (SCM) has important updates and upcoming events to share with you.

This month's features:  

• Message from Russell Chung, CPO
• Scheduled BFS Maintenance
• Bears that Buy Open Office Hours
• Reminder: Help Tools Tile in BearBUY
• Reminder: AI-Supported Approval Recommendations Live!
• Procurement Exchange Webinar
• Update: UC Insurance Requirements
• Tariff Exemption

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact the BearBUY Help Desk at 510-664-9000 (options 1, 2) or bearbuyhelp@berkeley.edu for immediate assistance.

Go Bears!

Thank you for your continued support, 

Supply Chain Management

Message from UC Berkeley CPO, Russell Chung

Hello, fellow Bears!

Happy New Year and welcome to a new semester at UC Berkeley!



Your Berkeley and UC systemwide procurement teams (including BearBUY) are focused on one thing in 2026: making purchasing simpler, faster, and easier to navigate.

This year we’ve launched and enhanced several improvements, including:

• The AI Purchasing Assistant in BearGPT (now live and getting smarter)
• A new UC Risk Matrix to clarify Certificate of Insurance requirements
• New Help Tools tile in BearBUY to guide chartfields, PO form selection, and required documentation

While UC purchasing isn’t always “one-touch” due to important financial and compliance controls, once a requisition is complete, over 70% of our 140,000+ POs are processed in a day or less.

We’re also working to make it easier to buy from UC-contracted suppliers—typically the fastest, lowest-risk, best-value option—and we’ll be rolling out new tools in 2026 to strengthen contract review and supplier support.



Thank you for your partnership, your feedback, and everything you do for Berkeley.

GO BEARS!

Russell Chung

Chief Procurement Officer, UC Berkeley

The BFS system will perform maintenance on Friday, January 30, 2026, from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. PST. BearBUY will be unavailable during this maintenance period.

Please prepare for planned system downtimes and visit the Controller’s Office website for the BFS Maintenance Schedule.

Please join us for our next remote office hour today, Tuesday, January 20, 2026, from 10:00 a.m. to 10:50 a.m.

We encourage you to submit topics of discussion and/or questions in advance using this Google form.


Representatives from the Procurement, BearBUY Solutions, Account Payable, and BRS teams will be available to answer your questions and provide information about purchasing at the University of California, Berkeley. Open Office Hours will be held on the third Tuesday of each month from 10:00 a.m. to 10:50 a.m.

Instructions and Zoom URL:

• To attend office hours, you MUST first be signed in to your Berkeley Zoom account. Please see How to sign in to your UC Berkeley Zoom account.
• You don't need to register. Join the Bears that Buy Open Office Hours or enter the Meeting ID 99363039857 in the Zoom desktop client.

Last month, we launched the Help Tools tile in BearBUY, listing all of our In-App guides and tools:

We will continue to roll out more guides and tools in the coming months to help users navigate BearBUY more easily. 

We’re excited to announce that the Purchasing Assistant in BearGPT. BearGPT operates under license from the secure confines of the UC San Diego Supercomputer Center and is built on OpenAI's dialogue-optimized large language model. This secure, on-premises hosting ensures UC's complete control over data usage and sharing.

The Purchasing Assistant will assist employees in purchasing goods and services, including finding contracts, FAQs, job aids, policies, and preferred suppliers. It will summarize newsletters, job aids, policy documents, and contract data. For further assistance, BearGPT will direct users to contact BearBUY Help Desk at bearbuyhelp@berkeley.edu.

Please note that BearGPT is accessible only to faculty and staff (including student employees). It is rated for P2 data and users must authenticate through CalNet to access BearGPT.

Purchasing Assistant Job-Aid

We are excited to expand the AI-Powered Recommendation Agent to support department financial approvers and requisition creators; helping users to make faster, more accurate approval decisions. This intelligent agent is built directly into your workflow and analyzes transaction details, including historic BearBUY data to return a probability of approval recommendation and highlight any potential issues to help users improve approval turnaround time without sacrificing accuracy or compliance. The AI agent gives you a thumbs up if the transaction is 80% likely to be approved. For any transactions below that threshold, we recommend that users carefully review the transaction before taking actions. In either case, users are still in the driver's seat and must decide whether to approve, edit, or return a requisition back to the requestor.

Your Feedback is Key! To continuously improve the agent's accuracy, please take a moment after using a recommendation to press the Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down feedback button. Your ratings are vital in refining the AI and making it an even more powerful tool for quick and reliable financial management.

Start experiencing quicker, smarter approvals TODAY!

Document Once, Improve Continuously: Process Mapping for Procurement

Friday, January 30, 2026, at 10:00 a.m. 

Get more information and register here for a brief overview of process mapping fundamentals, a live Nintex Process Manager demo, a procurement case study, and Q&A.

The University of California's Office of Risk Services has published a new Risk Matrix as a standardized framework to evaluate contract risk levels across the UC system. This matrix helps Bears that Buy determine whether a Certificate of Insurance (COI) must be collected for contracts and purchase orders, in accordance with UC Policy BUS-63. The matrix categorizes risk exposures as "High," "Moderate," or "Low" to ensure consistent certificate of insurance collection practices. Note: The matrix should not be distributed to individuals outside of UC or to suppliers.

If a purchase or contract involves any of the high-risk exposures described in the matrix, a Certificate of Insurance (COI) must be collected from the supplier and included on your BearBUY requisition before the supplier ships its goods or starts services for UC Berkeley. Per UCOP of Risk Services, a COI does not need to be collected on Moderate and Low risk categories. Contact your SCM buyer for guidance on using this matrix or interpreting specific contract risk levels. The final determination of risk is always subject to UC Berkeley's local Risk Management office based on the activities involved in each purchase order/contract.

Tariff Exemption

Supply Chain Management has established a new website explaining the process for the duty-free application submission via the ITA-338P Form for potential tariff exemptions on equipment manufactured outside the United States.


Some scientific and research equipment could qualify for a tariff exemption on scientific/research equipment purchases. UC Berkeley departments may wish to voluntarily submit an exemption request to the federal government when the equipment purchase will be used for educational or scientific purposes and, importantly, the equipment has no equivalent manufactured in the United States for the applicant's intended use. 


The application process is complex and time-consuming and should only be considered for high-value equipment purchases imported from outside the United States. Departments will likely need to budget and pay the duty upon entry to the United States and seek a refund if the exemption is eventually granted. For more information on this process, please visit the Process for the Duty-Free Application Submission via the ITA-338P Form website.

Order Status





If you need assistance with determining the status of your order in BearBUY, visit the How to Find the Status of Your Order page on the SCM website. 

Please note that your SCM assigned Buyer will not receive the requisition until it has been approved by the department Org Node approver.

Who is My Department's Assigned Buyer?



If you are unsure of how to start your purchasing transaction, contact your Buyer for assistance by using your Org Node and Department Name to find your assigned Buyer located in this matrix.

Contracts in BearBUY





If you need help searching for a contract and applying it to your cart in BearBUY, please view the Searching for Contracts and Applying a Contract to Your Cart in BearBUY job aid.

Whether you are an experienced or a new BearBUY shopper, it is always best practice to take the BearBUY: Basics for Shoppers training if you haven't already.

To take this ESSENTIAL training, please click on this course #: BEESS950-Online.