Purchasing
Purchasing is the process of figuring out how to buy the things that you need to buy and following through with that purchase.
Quick Warning
Purchasing is actually a pretty difficult process in bigger institutions and groups - it is not as simple as the purchases you make in normal life. In an ideal world we would have a full time employee dedicated to help us do purchasing but sometimes economic or other factors prevent us from having one single person to go to. Larger groups have to live with this cost and is part of the difficult of growing a group.
This page is meant to give an overview of the complicated purchasing process so that you can understand what is happening.
Overview
To make a purchase, you have to go through the following steps:
Identify what you want to purchase
Estimate how much things will cost
Choose the account that you will be using to purchase
Obtain approval from faculty advisor
Place order with vendor
Best Practices:
CC Dr. Kuh on purchasing correspondence
If you can, call the company to look for the campus sales rep. If there is one, deal with them directly to get quotes for purchasing.
Problems:
Multiple types of accounts
Multiple points of contact
Personnel changes
No local UH foundation contact anymore
Types of accounts:
UH Foundation
Departmental Funds
College Funds
Setting Up An Order
Starting
Set up purchasing parts spreadsheet
Try to use Vendors that take Purchase Orders (POs) or whatever is compatible with Accounts (Adafruit and Digikey)
Major things to include
Part Name, Vendor, Link to Part/Part Number, Unit cost, Quantity, Total Cost, Reasoning/Who requested it
DL Spreadsheet → Edit to be reasonable
Check for crazy purchases - ask the person who requested it
Edit amount of parts to fit the budget
Check to make sure we fit the PO
Send to Dr. Kuh for approval
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Include which account you will be using for which purchases
Create the price quotes for the order
Some vendors have ways to create your own “wishlist” that can be used
Others have a cart that can be used as well
Ex. Digikey can use the cart, Adafruit has the wishlist option
Print the total order (including items, subtotal, tax, total, etc.) as a PDF
Include shipping costs (Estimates/ list of estimated shipping costs)
Upload a copy of each file to the item request Google Drive folder
Placing An Order
Buying the things!
Send the PQ's to Lori/whomever the account holder Note: Get New Process Tho
Include which account is going to be used for which purchases
CC Dr. Kuh, scel, PM
Signify that this order has been ordered
Change the folder name to (Ordered)
Update the budget
New Processessi
~~ For Adafruit:
Using the SCEL account, complete an online order with PO selected as the intended purchasing option
After receiving PO from account holder, send Adafruit a pdf copy of the PO. They should send a confirmation email thread which asks for it.
Then they will send you a shipping confirmation
~~ For Digikey:
Send the price quote (cart) and PO (from account holder) to
[email protected] stating you would like them to process the order and send the invoice. I included the shipping address with my own name. You can use Dr. Kuh if he's on campus. It doesn't matter whos name is on the shipping address, it's just who has to pick up the package from the office.
Wait til you receive it - usually goes to HH483 - EE office or HH250
Once you've picked up the package, be sure to mention to the account holder that we received the package so that they may complete the purchasing process.
Receiving An Order
Christmas Presents Opening Time
Tell the office the list of people that are able to pick up the package
If you don't tell the office, then only the one name who ordered it (it might even be Lori) will be able to order it
Locate packing slip - it's sometimes on the outside of the box
Check off each item from the package on the packing slip
Make sure there is correct product and quantity
Checker: Inital and date the packing slip and file into cabinet in the purchases folder
Inventory parts order and sort items into their correct place
Authors
Contributing authors:
dkvilla
jobatake
kluong
Created by kluong on 2016/02/24 23:45.