Purchasing cards S_HUARD@xxxxxx 01 Mar 1999 08:38 EST
1) Do you use procurement cards on grants? ***Yes. For almost 2 years. 2) If so, do you issue one card per grant, one card per PI, one card per department? ***Cards are issued to people (after a training/certifying session) and there is wide variability of how they are deployed: business staff, PI's themselves, (*some* grad students). Some PI's have more than one card. Some PI's have cards that they use themselves; some have cars that they have handed over to their business staff to use on their behalf. > 3) If you issue one card per PI or department, what is the process to post the charges to the individual grants? ***PCard charges are fed from the bank to a subsystem that we created. Each PCard has a default account, and the transaction charge is posted IN THE SUBSYSTEM to the default account. Business staff may then redistribute the charges to other accounts, as instructed by the cardholders. There is a feed every night from the PCARD subsystem to our financial accounting system and any/all subsystem records flagged as ready to batch are fed. > > 4) Have procurement cards been successful on grants? What challenges have you faced? ***Yes, they have been successful. An early challenge was to make sure that appropriate documentation was kept on PCard purchases. We handled this through training and monthly audits of new business centers as they became trained in the use of the cards. A subsequent challenge has been our ability to file the small business/ mbe/wbe reports. We had to proscribe use of PCards on all accounts that had such a reporting requirement until we developed a system to deal with the loss of vendor information. It took us almost a year to work out this new system. (It involved building a cross reference file to match the merchant name that we receive from the bank with a vendor code from our finance system. It requires some staff time to monitor this file). Suzanne ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Suzanne Huard Mgr, Information Systems & Technology Tel: 603-862-2005 Office of Sponsored Research Fax: 603-862-3564 University of New Hampshire Durham, NH 03824 Mailto:xxxxxx@unh.edu ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ====================================================================== Instructions on how to use the RESADM-L Mailing List, including subscription information and a web-searchable archive, are available via our web site at http://www.hrinet.org (click on "Listserv Lists") ======================================================================