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

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