Purchasing is the process of figuring out how to buy the things that you need to buy and following through with that purchase.

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.

To make a purchase, you have to go through the following steps:

1. Identify what you want to purchase
2. Estimate how much things will cost
3. Choose the account that you will be using to purchase
4. Obtain approval from faculty advisor
5. Place order with vendor

Best Practices:

1. CC Dr. Kuh on purchasing correspondence
2. 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:

1. Multiple types of accounts
2. Multiple points of contact
3. Personnel changes
4. No local UH foundation contact anymore

Types of accounts:

1. UH Foundation
2. Departmental Funds
3. College Funds

Starting

1. Set up purchasing parts spreadsheet
   1. Try to use Vendors that take Purchase Orders (POs) or whatever is compatible with Accounts (Adafruit and Digikey)
   2. Major things to include
      1. Part Name, Vendor, Link to Part/Part Number, Unit cost, Quantity, Total Cost, Reasoning/Who requested it
2. DL Spreadsheet → Edit to be reasonable
   1. Check for crazy purchases - ask the person who requested it
   2. Edit amount of parts to fit the budget
   3. Check to make sure we fit the PO
3. Send to Dr. Kuh for approval
   1. Make sure to CC [email protected] as well as current PM
   2. Include which account you will be using for which purchases
4. Create the price quotes for the order
   1. Some vendors have ways to create your own “wishlist” that can be used
   2. Others have a cart that can be used as well
   3. Ex. Digikey can use the cart, Adafruit has the wishlist option
   4. Print the total order (including items, subtotal, tax, total, etc.) as a PDF
   5. Include shipping costs (Estimates/ list of estimated shipping costs)
   6. Upload a copy of each file to the item request Google Drive folder

Buying the things!

1. Send the PQ's to Lori/whomever the account holder Note: Get New Process Tho
   1. Include which account is going to be used for which purchases
   2. CC Dr. Kuh, scel, PM
2. Signify that this order has been ordered
   1. Change the folder name to (Ordered)
3. Update the budget

• ~~ 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.

Christmas Presents Opening Time

1. Tell the office the list of people that are able to pick up the package
   1. 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
2. Locate packing slip - it's sometimes on the outside of the box
3. Check off each item from the package on the packing slip
   1. Make sure there is correct product and quantity
   2. Checker: Inital and date the packing slip and file into cabinet in the purchases folder
4. Inventory parts order and sort items into their correct place

Contributing authors:

Created by kluong on 2016/02/24 23:45.