Guidance

Low Value Provision online application and guidance

Updated 19 September 2024

Supplier guidance on using Basware

Since commencement of the new Low Value Provision (LVP) process, Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) Shared Services have developed the following guidance to assist new suppliers register and transact with DWP.

If you require any further assistance, please contact us on:

Telephone: 01633 631 500
Monday to Thursday, 8:30am to 4:30pm
Friday, 8:30am to 4pm
Email: sscl.procurementoperationsteam@gov.sscl.com

For any invoice or payment related queries please contact the Payment Services Helpline on:

Telephone: 0345 241 5352

The following checklist provides the pre-requisites required to become an LVP supplier to DWP.

1. Obtaining your D-U-N-S® number

Before you can register as an LVP supplier, you need to have a Dun & Bradstreet (D&B), D-U-N-S® number. If you do not know your number or your organisation does not currently have one, you should contact Dun & Bradstreet directly by visiting the Dun & Bradstreet website.  Alternatively, you can contact them via telephone or email:

Telephone: 0870 243 2344
Email: customerhelp@dnb.com

The Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) was developed by, and is regulated by, Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) which assigns a unique numeric identifier to a single business entity. A DUNS number is a unique nine-digit number assigned to each business location in the D&B database which has a unique, separate, and distinct operation to businesses for the purpose of identifying them. This means a retail chain like Tesco or B&Q may have a unique DUNS number for each retail site as well as regional or head offices.

A DUNS number is required for both suppliers and buyers to register on Basware. Because DUNS numbers are unique, they ensure there is no duplication of any organisation during registration. As they are unique, they allow the system to identify unique delivery or order points, so if your organisation has more than one branch or site, your order can be routed appropriately.

Registration for a DUNS number is free of charge, and in many cases is done automatically, without a business entity realising it has been issued a DUNS number. Registration normally takes less than 10 business days.

2. Pre- registration with Basware

Visit the Application to deliver Low Value Provision.

Enter relevant organisation details and select ‘Find D-U-N-S® Number’ button.

Select the relevant DUNS number from the options provided. If the DUNS number, you enter is not recognised please refer to Obtaining your DUNS above.  

If you receive an error message to say that your organisation is already registered you should contact the helpdesk at the email or phone number provided, where a new username and password will be generated and sent to the registered email account.

You will then be sent two separate emails direct to the email address you provided, one will contain a username and link to the Basware registration site and the other a password.

3. Completing the registration process

Once you have received your username and password you can complete the registration process.

Access the Basware website using the link provided in the email.

Hint and Tip. The emails may go into your spam so please check this if it seems you have not received your username and password.

To log in to the Basware system please ensure you copy and paste the username and password as sometimes the system will not recognise them.

The registration process consists of the following sections / pages:

1.  D-U-N-S No.  – confirmation of your organisation’s DUNS number

2. Organisation – information about your organisation, for example address details

3. Contact Details -contact details for your organisation

4. Legal and Tax – company registration and VAT registration status and numbers

5. Bank Details – bank details (mandatory for those suppliers registering for LVP, optional for all others)

6. Services and Products – a selection of the services and products you provide

7. Locations – a selection of the locations within the UK that your organisation can provide goods and services to

8. Validation – a validation page to confirm all mandatory information has been entered

After finalising the above steps and accepting the terms and conditions, 3 emails will be sent to the email address defined in the contact details page which will:

1. provide confirmation that registration is completed

2. provide the user login name to login to the Basware Network for the UK Public Sector

3. provide the initial password to login to the Basware Network for the UK Public Sector

4. Registration validation

The first time you log in to your Basware account, you will be asked to change your password.

An additional security screen will now be displayed inviting you to input a security question that can be used if your user account becomes locked.

Following your password reset you will not be able to access the supplier portal until you have configured your organisation details. You will see a red warning message at the top of the screen. You should check that the information in your company details is correct including email address for the delivery of RFQs and orders then select the save icon. This is a one-off process before you begin transacting with DWP. You will not be able to access the supplier portal until this action has been taken.

5. Certify for LVP

Certification for the LVP DPS comes in 2 parts:

Part 1 – The Qualification Questionnaire

This stage of the certification is to confirm the supplier qualifies to provide quotations to the DWP for the LVP DPS. If the answer to any of these questions is No, they will automatically be rejected from this contract as they do not meet the necessary requirements.

Part 2 – The Item Questionnaire

This stage determines what a supplier provides and where, and this step is necessary to receive any RFQs and can only be completed if they have completed and been approved for part 1.

5.1. The Qualification Questionnaire

All Public sector Contracts hosted on Basware can be found under the Contracts menu when logged in to Basware.  To certify for the LVP DPS, select the Contracts menu tab. From this tab, all the contracts available will be visible and available to apply for (please note that different contracts have different qualification criteria). Locate the DWP LVP certification / DWP LVP Questionnaire contract and select the Join icon to open the contract qualification page.

 Complete all the mandatory questions (marked with an *) and select the Submit button at the bottom of the page. Tool tips are available on most of the questions under the icon.

As the LVP DPS contract is set to auto approve or reject based on the answers, you will receive an email notification confirming if you have been approved or rejected straight away. If approved, you will now see a Cog icon on the contract to complete part 2 - the Item Questionnaire.

5.2. The Item Questionnaire

To begin creating the Item Questionnaire, select the cog icon on the DWP LVP certification / DWP LVP Questionnaire contract.

Next select the Create button.

You should now complete all the mandatory fields (marked with a *).

These fields are specific to the services you provide. Fields which display “Enter value” are free text. As a guide the information required is as follows:

Name – Name of your training service or company name

SKU – Stock keeping unit or unique reference for this service.

Description – Short description of your training services (1 line).

Keywords – Key words the buyer can use to search for your services.

Unavailable – You can mark this item as unavailable and come back to it later to complete before making it available for the customer to see.

Contact email – Contact email that will receive notifications of RFQs.

Supplier Item ID – Unique reference for this training service.

Item Name - Name of your training service.

Description – Long description (multiple lines) of your training service/ services.

Service Categories – Categories of training services you can provide.

Locations – Where can you provide these services.

You should select all the Service Categories that you can provide training for. This will impact how many Request for Quote’s (RFQs) you receive, you should be as specific as possible about what training you can provide to prevent you receiving RFQs that you are unable to respond to. There is an option to select “Other”, if this is selected it may well mean you receive a high volume of RFQs that are not relevant to your organisation.

You should select all the locations that you can provide training to. By selecting United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the supplier will receive RFQs for all locations. You can use the down arrow icon below to drill down to specific countries or boroughs. The double arrow icon can be used to expand the window size.

Select the Submit button when you have completed the Item Questionnaire. You will be returned to the Item Directory, select the Done button.

The certification requires you to re-certify every 12 months. You can see the expiration date on the contracts screen.

6. Invoicing set-up

To enable the correct invoices to be sent you also need to amend a field within your company information.

Again, this is a one-off process that should be completed prior to sending any invoices.

Select Admin > Company Admin from the supplier portal.

Scroll down the page to the heading ‘General – Documents’ and in the ‘Quantity Decimal Places’ field, enter 2 (normally defaults to 0).

Select ‘Save’ icon.

After completing the registration process, you will be eligible to receive and respond to RFQs for Low Value Provision.

7. Receiving RFQs

For requirements up to £1,000 excluding VAT, DWP will select one Supplier to provide a quotation. DWP Buyers will use their procurement and commodity knowledge to select the most appropriate supplier to provide the training requirement.

However, the Buyer can increase the level of competition if this will result in better value for money.

The requirement may be for one attendee or multiple. Details of the number of attendees will be contained within the Annex 3 or Annex 3a.

For requirements over £1,000 excluding VAT, DWP sends RFQs to all suppliers that have selected the relevant category or training course within the registration process.

If you begin receiving RFQs for training, you cannot provide you may wish to review the training categories you selected during registration. You can do this by repeating the steps in section 5.2 above and updating the categories/locations.

When an RFQ is sent, you will receive an email notification which includes a PDF copy of the RFQ. This is not the RFQ, and you will be unable to open the attachment or respond to this. You must respond via your Basware account.

8. Viewing RFQs

Access the RFQ by selecting the ‘Quotes’ tab in your Basware account.

From this page you can see your key document counts, with new/open RFQs displayed as ‘Open requests’. By selecting the ‘See All’ link or the Documents tab you will be able to see all your documents sent or received regardless of status.

If you select any of the number counts on your Quick Quote Dashboard your list of those documents will be displayed. You can view the RFQ using the blue arrow to the right.

Once the document has been opened, you will see an attachment on each RFQ, which must be completed and returned along with your quotation. The link to open the attachment will appear at the line level, it will be always begin with Annex 3 or Annex 3a.

Hint and Tip: You may receive a Basware standard message alert when you open the attachment, if you do, select ‘OK’ to proceed.

You will then be given the option to open or save the attached document. You should complete the Annex 3 or Annex 3a with your quote details and save locally, for example desktop, My Documents, and then close the attachment, prior to responding to the quote within the portal. Do not amend or add any further information to the specification details.

Note: For multiple attendees, the price of the training is the cost for all attendees to attend the training, not an individual.

9. Responding to RFQs

From the Document Summary screen select the ‘Create Quote’ button.

Within the quote 2 sections are displayed:

Quote Details – to change your Quote ID or add Delivery Costs (not required for LVP RFQs)

Quote Lines – to add your pricing.

To add your pricing, select either the ‘Add quote line’ button or the + icon.

Once you have selected either of these options, complete the fields as appropriates (mandatory fields are marked with *). Some of these fields may not be amendable such as Classification code as these may have been fixed by the buyer. Once you have completed this section with details of what you are quoting for, select the Save button.

You must add the Annex 3 or Annex 3a as an attachment. To add an attachment or multiple attachments, expand the Attachments section by clicking in the area, the word or on the > arrow. Here you can drag and drop single or multiple documents or select from a location. You can add up to 20 documents in multiple formats which will be shown.  

Once you have filled out all the relevant sections, either scroll to the top of the screen or the bottom and select the Send quote button.

The status at the top of the screen will now change to ‘Sent’ and a pop up at the bottom of the screen will confirm the quote has been sent.

If the Buyer awards your quote, you will get an email confirming this and the status will turn from ‘Sent’ to ‘Awarded’.

It is DWP policy to pay on completion of training. If you require payment at any other interval, you will need to highlight this in your quote details on the Annex 3 or Annex 3a.

You must only use the standard character set available on your computer keyboard. If there is a need to include information on Quotes or Invoices that uses non-standard characters, you must include them in the Annex 3 or Annex 3a. If you do not take this action, any Quotes or Invoices submitted with special characters will fail to be passed to DWP.

10. Winning the quote

For single quotations up to £1,000, the responsibility will lie with the Buyer to ensure the quote is fit for purpose and the price is within expected parameters.

All requirements above £1,000 with be formally evaluated and the RFQ that best meets DWP needs will be awarded the contract.

If you do not hear from DWP within 5 working days of the closing date, you should presume you have been unsuccessful on this occasion.

If you are successful in the tender process, you will receive a Purchase Order from DWP. You will be notified in the same way you are informed about an RFQ; you will receive an email notification including PDF.

You will also receive an SL2 from Jobcentre Plus for each attendee of the training stating the start and end dates. You will need to return it to the named Jobcentre Plus contact once training has taken place to allow for payment. You may need to return the form several times to ensure Jobcentre Plus is updated on customer progress and ensure payments are made at the agreed stages.

Note: If your quote is accepted by DWP, your organisation may also be awarded any duplicate requirements arising in the same geographical area within the subsequent 6 months and to a maximum value of £50,000. There is, however, no guarantee of any additional requirements.

11. Submitting an invoice

An invoice should only be sent once the training has taken place and a completed SL2 has been returned to Jobcentre Plus.

To submit an invoice, you must first select the Purchase Order from your Supplier Portal in Basware by highlighting the relevant Order from the Document List and selecting the arrow next to ‘Create Invoice’.

The Purchase Order > Invoice screen will be displayed. Before you can complete the invoice information you must save the details to generate an invoice number, select save icon. A warning will appear in red across the middle of the screen stating “Warning. No invoice lines”.

Enter invoice lines by selecting the ‘Add Lines’ button. You should choose this button each time you create an invoice from a new Purchase Order to ensure the relevant information is transferred from the Purchase Order into the invoice lines.

The price and quantity will appear to be the wrong way around but do not amend this. The quantity field should contain the price and the price field should equal 1.

Note: If you make any changes to the invoice will see a field populated with Social Care (the field next to the Item ID field). The information in this field must be deleted as it has been populated from the DWP system, but the Basware system does not recognise the details. If this is not deleted, you will not be able to save the changes and proceed.

Once all the information has been populated select the ‘save’ icon again and then submit the invoice. You will receive a warning screen prior to the invoice being submitted to say that once it is sent it cannot be undone.

Select ‘Submit’ again to confirm.

12. Submitting a partial invoice

If DWP has agreed to staged payments and you want to send an invoice for the agreed amount you need to follow the information above to create the invoice but prior to saving the information and submitting, you must select ‘edit’ icon.

Enter the amount you wish to invoice in the quantity field then select the save icon and send as you normally would.

Hint and Tip. For each staged payment a new SL2 is required in order for payment to be released.

13. Re-submitting a rejected invoice

In some circumstances the invoice you submit may be rejected. This usually happens if the information provided does not identically match the information held in the DWP system. In this instance you will receive a call from SSCL asking you to resubmit the invoice and will be advised of the process required.

14. Re-registration

When you first register to become a LVP supplier, you answer the certification questions to allow you to trade with DWP. The certification expires after 12 months, so dependent on when you register, you will need to re-register on or before the anniversary of the initial registration.

If you do not complete your renewal, you will no longer receive LVP RFQs or Purchase Orders from DWP. However, as soon as the certification is completed, you will be able to continue as normal.

When your certification has expired, repeat the steps in part 5.1 and 5.2 to re-certify and continue receiving LVP RFQs.

15. Help and support

If you require any further assistance, please contact us on:

Telephone: 01633 631 500
Monday to Thursday, 8:30am to 4:30pm
Friday, 8:30am to 4pm
Email: sscl.procurementoperationsteam@gov.sscl.com

For any invoice or payment related queries please contact the Payment Services Helpline on:

Telephone: 0345 241 5352

Annex 1: Frequently asked questions

Will I as a small company be able to use the service?    

As the service is an Internet-based solution, you only need a PC and Internet connection to use the service. The service offers benefit to any supplier, regardless of their size, technical capability, or location.

How much does it cost to join and trade with the service?          

There are no registrations or transaction-based fees of any kind for suppliers using the system. If you wish to integrate the system with your back-office systems or to enable buyers to punch-out to your existing eCommerce website, then you will need to set up these interfaces and bear this cost.

What benefits will my business gain in trading online through the service?         

Suppliers can achieve savings as a result of online trading, by reducing administration procedures and removing the cost of printing and posting invoices and statements. Furthermore, the service as the UK Public Sector’s preferred choice will potentially allow you to market your services to new customers.

We already have an eCommerce/trading website and want to use this to trade with our customers. Can we do this?               

If you have an existing trading website with “shopping cart” functionality and wish to link this to the service to sell to your customers, you may be able to do this. Customers may be able to use the service to visit your site and place orders. However, some other forms of integration may be required. There may be a cost associated with integrating your site to the new marketplace depending upon the degree of integration required or the level of functionality your existing website provides.

I supply more than one Public Sector organisation. Will I need to go through this all over again for those organisations? 

No, if your other government customers also join, you will be ready to trade with them and will not need to repeat your registration. You will only have to load or provide additional specific catalogues on the system. The system will help you ensure that only the right customers see the right catalogues.

So does this mean I will need to operate both traditional and e-enabled systems to trade with all the government departments?  

Yes, you will need to operate both traditional and electronic processes until all your other government or Public Sector customers join. When they join, you will already be set-up to trade with them.

If my organisation objects to using the Internet for religious reasons, will my customers stop trading with me? 

The Public Sector will not discriminate against those organisations whose employees do not use the Internet for religious reasons. Please speak to your customer to determine what arrangements they have made to be able to trade with you.

We have pricing structures for various areas. Can we show this on the system?

You can create individual catalogues for each pricing structure and upload them. The system can hold an unlimited amount of catalogues and they are maintained by the supplier. You can then define what buying organisation you want to be able to view them.

How can we add delivery charges?         

Delivery charges can be handled by either adding into the line item or attaching an associated line item.

What support is there to help suppliers trade on the system?   

If you have received an invitation to a supplier adoption forum, then we would strongly recommend you attend as these are proven to answer a number of common questions from suppliers.

Further to the forums, Basware run regular internet based online training sessions “webinars”. You will be able to register for these on the Supplier Portal once you have been invited to become a supplier.

Further information and help is also available on the Basware website where you can search for guidance.

Alternatively, you can contact the Basware Service Desk via 0845 6032885 or log a case.

Please note that it would be helpful if you had your organisations name and DUNS number when contacting the Service Desk.

I have tried logging into the system, and I am getting an error message saying “Please contact your system administrator”. What do I do?  

If you have attempted to get in the system several times without success, you may have locked yourself out of your account. You need to contact the SSCL First Line Support via email at sscl.procurementoperationsteam@gov.sscl.com with your company name, your Basware username and contact details. SSCL will arrange for your account to be unlocked.

Once this action has been confirmed, the system will take approximately 10 minutes to upload the change. Input your username and click forgotten password. You will receive your new password via email, which will enable you to access the system.

I have received a Purchase Order from DWP, when can I submit my invoice?      

DWP standard payment terms are pay on completion. Therefore, an invoice should not be submitted until training has taken place. If you have any queries around this, please contact SSCL First Line Support on 01633 631 500 or sscl.procurementoperationsteam@gov.sscl.com.

How do I view RFQ attachments in the Basware Supplier Portal?             

If an RFQ has an attachment, a hyperlink will display in the line details of the RFQ. Click on the hyperlink to view the attachment. You may receive a Basware standard message alert. If you do, click ‘OK’ to proceed. You will then be given the option to open or save the attached document.