How does your team make purchases?
 

Our public school system is curious about how other FRC teams purchase the items they need due to FRC's unique situation in which many of our purchases are time sensitive and can't wait for often delayed school paperwork. Please help us gather some data on how other teams operate.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1ZFA...1AyJw/viewform

I'll publish the results after we get some responses. Thanks!

Re: How does your team make purchases?
 

[4967] We're not affiliated with a school, so this may not help but, we have a debit card for the team's checking account. We are also a 501(c)3 so we get tax-exempt at a lot of places.

Re: How does your team make purchases?
 

Thanks for all the responses!

So far, most teams are reporting that they make large purchases through Purchase Orders from their school while smaller purchases or immediate needs through some type of credit card.

Re: How does your team make purchases?
 

This is also what we do, any items over a certain amount are required to have a PO, other smaller items are bought as needed and reimbursements can be made from the school system.

Re: How does your team make purchases?
 

In addition to the response I submitted (PO + credit card combination), I'll mention the following:

In my first 2-3 years, I put almost everything on a personal credit card and got reimbursed. I never want to go back to that. Even though a system like that makes it easy to buy stuff on the spot as soon as the need comes up, it's bad from a school perspective (paper trail not as good, easier theoretical chance of unethical shenanigans) and it's very inconvenient from my personal finance perspective. I much prefer doing all of the purchasing through the proper channels.

Of course, there's also that parallel purchasing system: mentor or coach simply buys stuff on their own and donates it. I don't even want to know how much that adds up to.

Overall, I've found it very important to have a good relationship with administrators that is built on their ability to trust me with the team's finances. They don't like it when an account goes way in the hole.

Re: How does your team make purchases?
 

We have a school credit card but for most large purchases ($1,000+) they prefer that I put in a check request but if I need to I can still put it on the card if it's time sensitive. This is definitely the best system I have ever worked under.

Back in high school we would make purchases thorough our Vice Principle. We would meet them at their office first thing in the morning and get on their computer and buy things and have them do the check out process on the school credit card.

I've also done the full reimbursement thing, that was an interesting year. I got a new credit card (0% interest for a few months) just for that and was probably putting close to a $1,000 a week on it during build season. Luckily they were pretty fast with the reimbursement checks.

Re: How does your team make purchases?
 

The treasurer of our non-profit (which is what we run our funds through, not the school) has credit cards we order with. The cards are paid off with the team account.

It's hard to get a school to jive w/ such a system, but it is a huge competitive advantage to be able to order what and when you want (as long as you're within budget).

Re: How does your team make purchases?
 

It's possible to be pretty agile with a combination of open purchase orders and credit cards if the district and team are both doing their parts effectively. For a handful of vendors that get used often, it's not that difficult to create open purchase orders in advance and then order stuff as you go. Those types of orders aren't any more cumbersome for me than buying with a credit card on the spot.

The trouble always comes in when either the team or the district isn't able to use actual sense to make decisions. I know that some places have super strict purchasing rules, and I'm sure that creates some real headaches and even lowers the competitive ceiling for a team.

Re: How does your team make purchases?
 

Ask if your school will allow blanket PO's
I simply write 5-6 PO's for the season for my vendors and I use them as lines of credit with them. (AndyMark is VERY good with this). I have them written right after Thanksgiving so they are back to me before Winter Break. I email the vendors a copy of the PO requesting they keep them on file for my team this season and off we go. Some Vendors have to be reminded each time that there is a PO on file, but there has never been an issue with a vendor refusing to use this method.

Re: How does your team make purchases?
 

While things like registration or travel reservations (on a more open timeline) are done with PO's or by sponsors granting directly to our FIRST account, almost everything we need right this second is done on personal credit cards and reimbursed later (which the school is painfully slow at).

I definitely don't recommend it, but it's what we do to make it work. It's absolutely agonizing for a group of mentors with lives, families, college bills, etc - to look at the purchase we want to make and decide whose credit card is going to take the hit... thankfully we get in back in the end. The waiting period just isn't super fun.

Silver lining positivity: It makes us think hard about what we need & how badly we need it!

Re: How does your team make purchases?
 

For the most part our team has made purchases on personal credit cards/cash which was previously reimbursed by the school (painfully slow) and over this summer we moved to 4-H which has given us financial control so we've moved a good portion of our finances to an account we control. We are still making purchases on personal credit cards however reimbursement can take place at one of our meetings as long as our treasurer is given a heads up.

For our time sensitive robot build parts we used the above for our first few seasons however we have been very fortunate to have a generous local sponsor who handles our part orders instead of giving us a check. This is something you could approach a current sponsor if they would consider doing or ask if they would donate Visa/American Express gift cards which gives you direct access to donations you could use for spending on time sensitive parts. If you've had a strong relationship with a sponsor they might consider helping you out if you explain that your 6 weeks would be more productive if you weren't spending days waiting for orders to arrive because of the hassle in getting orders sent out.

Re: How does your team make purchases?
 

Same here, we use a mix of credit cards and on hand cash from fundraiser that we just don't deposit into our account for when we have to run out and get something.

Here is what our school had agreed to do for our team.
1.) blanket po with our primary suppliers. (Andy mark , vex, robot space,MCMASTER carr...). Try to do this as much as possible. It is the easiest way and has the greatest amount of " checks and balances" in place. They should also be familiar with this process and it will shouldn't make them uncomfortable.

2.) For generic purchases on the internet I submit a request for the school to place the order. This process needs 2 week lead time, so I obviously don't do this for critical items.

3.) For expenses at local stores ( hd, lowes, harbor freight), I request to spend "up to" a certain amount. Then I submit a check request for reimbursement. This process for #3 is an absolute pain. Most other schools just have a check reimbursement process. I have to gain approval in advance, and then also submit for reimbursement.

Re: How does your team make purchases?
 

The blanket PO is a great idea, we may have to do that with AndyMark and Vex.

I need one more submission to reach 50 and I'll publish the results back here in the next few days. https://docs.google.com/a/virginiafi...1AyJw/viewform

Re: How does your team make purchases?
 

Completed.
We are now running all money (fundraising, sponsors, expenses, etc.) through our non-profit. We were going to approach the school with a proposal to allow us to do this, but the school actually recommended that we use a non-profit for our program. So it was a win-win for us.

Now we can order things as soon as we need them. We can go make a trip to the hardware store and use the non-profit card to purchase things. All of this has the typical assumptions that there is enough money, within budget, proper approvals/procedures, etc.

We tried this last year after RC from West Coast Products made the recommendation, and it was not successful - the school wouldn't allow us to this. We had to provide a line item request each time and it would still go through the same 2-3 week-ish process.

Re: How does your team make purchases?
 

Not all schools have this requirement. That is why they need to check with the school. My school has no problem with this and we are even in the same state.

Re: How does your team make purchases?
 

All our purchases (large and small) go through the personal credit card of a single mentor who is then reimbursed from the team's account with the school. While there is certainly the possibility of abuse with a system like this, there is a huge advantage to being able to buy any part right when it is needed.

Re: How does your team make purchases?
 

Adafruit excepts tax exemptions for non-profits such as schools and school districts.
http://www.adafruit.com/faq

Re: How does your team make purchases?
 

We have a team account for everything throughout the year and out head coach makes all of our purchases. A lot of things tend to get pretty expensive during build season, so if you start ordering basic things now and are ready to wait you'll spend a lot less. During build season you end up shipping things a lot faster. During build season it's hard enough to keep track of much, so your spending will always get pretty high. Just try to start build season with a big budget before you start building your $5000 pile of metal shavings on the floor