Applicability

Faculty & Staff

Last Revised

06/20/2007

Policy Owner

Milligan (jmillig)

Governing Body

n/a

SAS 112 Applic.

no

The Business Office Procurement Card is a convenient alternative method of making purchases on University and Grant budgets.  The implementation of the PeopleSoft FMS system brought about many changes in University policies and procedures.  In order to consistently apply good business practices and the University’s internal control procedures for purchases charged to externally-funded grants, the following changes to the Business Office Procurement Card (p-card) policy will be implemented.

Financial Management

• Departmental p-cards will be mapped only to Departmental Cost Centers (DCC).
• A Principal Investigator (PI) of a grant can obtain a p-card from the Business Office to facilitate purchasing from his/her grant.
• A PI with multiple grants can have any or all of his/her grants tied to one p-card.

Principle Investigator Involvement

• The PI must either be the card holder (reviewer) or the card manager (approver). 
• The PI cannot be both the card holder and the card manager.
  • A requestor (e.g., administrative assistant, budget officer) can request to obtain a new card for an individual PI’s grant(s).  The PI will be required to be the card manager.
  • If the PI wishes to be the card holder, his/her supervisor will be required to be the card manager.

Reconciliation and Approval

• The cardholder will be responsible for reviewing the transactions in the JPMorgan Chase PaymentNet system at the first level after the transactions are made.  If a PI has more than one grant tied to his/her card, the card holder will be responsible for selecting the grant to which each transaction is to be charged.
• The card manager is responsible for approving the charges to the card.  
• The PI (as either the card holder or the card manager) is responsible for ensuring the charges are reasonable and necessary expenses for the grant.
• The originals of all the receipts should be attached to the monthly statement and forwarded to the Grants Accounting Office by the 15^th of the following month. 
• The Grants Accounting staff will compare the charges on the statement to the receipts, check for allowability according to the regulations of the grants, and ensure there are enough funds in the budget. 
  • If a transaction is deemed unallowable for the grant, the charge will be moved to the DCC responsible for the grant.

Enforcement - If the above procedures are not followed:

1. The Grants Accounting staff will remind the cardholder and the PI via email at the end of the month if the statement and receipts are not received.  This will serve as a warning for the first month a statement is late.
2. If the Grants Accounting office does not receive the statement and receipts for a second consecutive month, the card will be placed on a hold status so that no spending will be allowed until all statements and receipts are received and reconciled.
3. If the Grants Accounting office does not receive the statement and receipts for a third consecutive month, the p-card will be revoked and all charges for the time period without supporting documentation will be transferred to the DCC responsible for the grant.

Effective Date

• This policy change will take effect immediately for newly issued cards. 
• All departmental p-cards will be updated to remove any grants associated with those cards by June 30, 2007. 
• As the existing cards are changed, PIs wishing to obtain a card (or wishing to have an assistant obtain a card) to continue purchasing on their grants will need to have the intended card holder complete a p-card application and agreement form, which can be found on the Business Office website.