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In December 1994, the Procurement Services Department began evaluating many
of the current procurement practices, with an eye for improving these
practices, wherever possible. Procurement Services reviewed the college's
purchase order, LPO, and office supply orders. What they found was that
purchases under $500 accounted for over 90% of the total number of purchases,
but only 13% of the total dollars. Clearly too much effort on the part of
Procurement Services, Accounts Payable, and other departments was being spent
handling small dollar transactions.
In an attempt to streamline the procurement of many of these small dollar
items, a proposal was prepared by Financial Services to conduct a pilot project
to assess the feasibility of introducing a Purchasing Card (Visa) program to be
utilized for a broad range of low-dollar procurement transactions. In early
February 1995, the Vice President and Treasurer endorsed this proposal.
In addition to the overall goal of evaluating the feasibility of a
Procurement Card program on campus, other specific goals of the pilot project
included:
Development and fine-tuning of policy and procedural issues.
Production of user guides and manuals.
MIS development of the necessary transaction load programs and screen
functionality to edit transactions prior to general ledger posting.
Work with local and national vendors to facilitate introduction of Procurement
Cards.
Seven departments, representing a variety of research, student service,
administrative, and academic departments, participated in the pilot project.
These departments were:
- College Printing and Mailing
- Environmental Studies
- German Department
- Internal Audit
- Office of Residential Life
- Pathology
- Thayer School
Sixty-six Procurement Cards were initially issued for the pilot project.
Cardholders began using their cards on May 15, 1995. In August 1995, the
Purchasing Card pilot project was completed. Financial Services performed an
audit of the record keeping procedures and surveyed the Purchasing Card
representatives and cardholders. The response was overwhelming positive. Below
are just a few of the comments made by the pilot project participants:
...a fast, efficient system...
...I especially like how fast it is when I am using it at local
businesses...
...the program saves a lot of processing time in both ordering and
record keeping...
...The (Purchasing) Card has reduced my purchasing paperwork by half;
(it) makes purchasing much easier for faculty and staff, and knowledge of
spending is easy to access with the PURC system; all and all, it has been a
wonderful experience which will benefit all Dartmouth employees in the
future...
...great idea - should have been implemented years ago...
...all I can say is, - it's about time!...
In August 1995, a report was prepared which recommended the implementation
of the Purchasing Card. The Vice President and Treasurer reviewed the report
and approved the implementation of the Purchasing Card.
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