Purchasing Cards

I have a member of the Treasury attempting to push through a P-card system. Conceptually, it makes all the sense in the world, but this person is only spouting the benefits in concert with the various sales people coming by. I want to know the pitfalls. What does not work well with P-cards? I also have an eProcurement system up and running and am wondering how or if these two systems can run in concert with one another. Any thoughts at all would be greatly appreciated.

P cards can lower your transaction cost, reduce the number of transactions coming to your shop. I would suggest that you have a daily transaction limit, monthly limit and a single transaction limit. You don't want the P card to become the primary method of procuring costly items because there is no competition and you might end increasing cost. This is off set by the lower transaction cost.

Biggest pitfall in the P-cards is control or 3 way match. We use P-Cards for non-essential procurement and with small value. Finance has issued P-Cards to Users and well as Procurement staff but users when using P-cards don't need to raise a requisition. P-Card statement is approved by the Department Head. Whereas, Procurement using P-cards requires that User raises a requisition and seek approval. Procurement raises a dumpy PO issued to self (company) and GR is made against that PO and material issued out. This way, we are able to maintain control on the spend.

Caji Mendonca
Director, Procurement