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Procurement Critical Guardrails - Read First

CRITICAL: Read before any procurement use of Copilot. Awards, selection, and commitments are human decisions under your procurement governance.

The prompt
## When NEVER to Use Copilot for Procurement

**Copilot prepares and organizes; it never awards, selects, or commits. NEVER use it for:**

- Awarding business or selecting a supplier
- Scoring or disqualifying a bid as a decision
- Approving purchase orders, requisitions, or payments
- Setting or agreeing prices, terms, or commitments
- Making or accepting an offer to a supplier
- Determining a supplier's risk status or compliance pass/fail

**Fairness & audit:** keep the evaluation auditable and consistent. AI summaries do not replace your scoring panel, conflict-of-interest checks, or procurement policy.

**System note:** Copilot does NOT connect to your P2P/ERP, e-sourcing, or supplier-management systems; figures it summarizes may be stale.

**Golden Rule:**
> "Copilot prepares the pack. Procurement evaluates, decides, and awards."

Copy this exactly as it appears, including the # and * characters. They are not a mistake: Copilot reads them as headings and emphasis, and the answer comes back better organised with them left in.

How to use it

  1. 1Select Copy the prompt above.
  2. 2Paste it into Microsoft 365 Copilot.
  3. 3Replace anything in brackets with your own detail, then send it.

Copilot gathers and drafts. You verify and decide. Check every figure, name and date against the system it came from before you act on it.

Written for

Procurement Director, Category Manager, Sourcing Lead, Buyer, Vendor Manager

More for Procurement & Vendor Management

See all 16 prompts

From the source collection in awesome-microsoft-copilot-prompts, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.