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Purchasing

Purchasing was (apparently) an easier job in the pre-COVID-19 era, during which time people for whom purchasing was a regular activity had ready access to credit cards. In the current era, credit cards essentially do not exist, which one the on hand means that people must start to follow the proper purchasing protocols, which have the advantage of low administrative burden for the finance team, but on the other hand, said protocols are ruthlessly inflexible and tedious to follow.

Buying things

Purchase orders

Approved suppliers

Procurement is ideally handled through the PurchaseNow platform, which is accessible through the staff intranet. The marketplace is similar to many other procurement platforms, allowing the user to perform a so-called round-trip purchase, whereby a suppliers site is accessed through the platform and at the check out stage, one is returned back to the PurchaseNow platform.

New suppliers

Details on adding new suppliers can be found on the procurement Intranet site. In short, one can request a new supplier, with the only non-trivial detail required beforehand is evidence of the supplier bank account details, which should be requested from the supplier before attempting this process.

Spending big

Sole supplier form

What if PurchaseNow breaks?

Imagine that one were trying to purchase something, and as part of a round-trip purchase the system ceased to function as expected. What does one do? Well, if it is clear the fault lies with the supplier, contact them. Otherwise, one can contact UTAS financial services; however this involves submitting a service request, which will inevitably take a long time to be solved. One can also submit a request to unimarket. In a case of round-trip purchasing failure with element14, all three were contacted in the hope the issue would be rectified in a timely manner.

Expense coding

The account string for all purchases must be allocated, and the nominated account will vary depending on the purpose of the purchase. In the case of general physics operating funds:

Account Code
Maths operating funds 044228
Physics operating funds 044002
Maths OHS 117818
Physics OHS 117819

Bespoke purchases

For one-time purchases, it is more-or-less necessary to process the payment via credit card. One can do this with a personal credit card and request reimbursement, but this process is highly exploitative and should be avoided. Currently, the only credit card for the school is kept by Morgan Green, a school (of natural sciences) administration assistant and contact should be made directly with her to arrange payment.

Obtaining a credit card

Like most things at UTAS, obtaining a credit card is an opaque and protracted process. The first step is to complete the corporate credit card application, which requires justification and an account code to which the card will be linked (e.g. 330 OP.113518 - Physics Credit Card Default). One can add proxies, who can also code transactions linked to the card, and it is advised to add the physics administration staff. When the wheels begin to turn, expect a request from finance asking for EDO approval. It would turn out that EDO stands for Executive Director of Operations, and for the college, that is currently Brett Harris. The Senior Executive Officer for the college, Clancy Carver is well placed to organise said approval and from that point it is in the hands of the finance team.

At some point down the track, one should receive an email stating the the card is on its way; however, one must first comply with the regulations around its use, notably:

It is an audit requirement and UTAS policy that all new UTAS Corporate Cardholders complete the Online Training video prior to receiving a Business Card and/or access to ProMaster.

The training can be found on the Forms, Guidelines & Training page, under the Corporate Credit Cards & ProMaster tab. As stated, the required training modules are:

although it would seem as though the completion of these modules is not recorded; at the time of writing, upon completion of the module one was directed to a broken link.

=== Expense coding === Coding of expenses is done by the credit card holder, unless the holder is sufficiently important. Expenses are coded using what is colloquially referred to as ProMaster, but appears to actually be the Inlogik expense management system. In any case, like most of the university apps which are outsourced commercial solutions, they are very clunky to use. The university provides a guide for first-time users of ProMaster, and the app can be accessed here. The training video does a pretty good job of demonstrating the actual coding process.

Addresses

Shipping address

Regardless of your activity, the following information may prove useful: deliveries should be addressed to a private bag when postage is via Australia post

Addressee Mathematics and Physics University of Tasmania Private bag 37 Hobart, Tasmania, 7001

or should be addressed to the street address for couriers

University of Tasmania Physics (SB.AU14) Clark Rd Sandy Bay, Tasmania, 7005

Mail delivery (and collection) is managed centrally by Campus Services

Billing address

Financial services have two locations, one in Hobart and one in Launceston, with the latter being responsible for credit cards. The addresses of both locations are given below:

Accounts billable Financial services University of Tasmania Private Bag 53 Hobart, Tasmania, 7001 Australia

Accounts billable Financial Services University of Tasmania Locked Bag 1353 Launceston, Tasmania, 7250 Australia

Last update: August 10, 2023