Excellence in
Financial Stewardship
Stanford Financial Management Services provides this quarterly newsletter as a part of its vision to inspire and enable excellence in financial stewardship.
Issue 2 | June 2021
A Focus on Best Practices

In this second issue of our Excellence in Financial Stewardship newsletter, we focus on best practices within two areas core to Stanford's ability to fulfill our mission: purchasing goods and services and processing donor gifts.

The university's ability to advance teaching, learning and research depends on procuring the needed services, resources and supplies, which in turn, are supported in part through the generous gifts from our donor community.

Getting these core activities right ensures our financial ecosystem can continue to support the students, postdocs, faculty, and staff who achieve amazing things at Stanford every day.

I hope this issue provides helpful best practices and resources to support you and your team to efficiently and effectively steward the university's resources.

Anne Sweeney-Hoy
Senior Associate Vice President of Finance

Purchasing Best Practices

A safe and effective purchasing process requires a collaboration across the faculty and staff who set the budgets and specify needs for goods and services, the preparers who facilitate the purchasing transactions, and the financial approvers who review and ensure appropriateness of each transaction.
Adopting purchasing best practices creates efficiencies in transaction processing and cost savings through university-wide negotiated pricing for common purchases. These efficiency gains on the common transactions allow for transaction preparers and financial approvers to spend more time being thoughtful and thorough on non-standard purchases.

Purchasing best practices at Stanford include the use of:
  • Amazon Business and SmartMart, both available in iProcurement, are the preferred purchasing methods for all routine office, medical and laboratory supplies, and IT peripherals. The Dell and Apple stores on SmartMart offer Stanford-customized products and bundles for university computer purchases.
     
  • CardinalTemps, also available via iProcurement, offers a seamless experience, from requisition to hire and supplier invoicing for temporary/contingent labor needs. CardinalTemps offers a holistic approach that not only mitigates risks and boosts efficiency efforts across the university, but it also improves the level of qualified temporary workers showcased for all hiring managers.
     
  • Purchasing Cards (PCards) are university-issued and university-paid credit cards, which can be used to make eligible purchases on behalf of the university. Expenses charged to the PCard are paid directly by the university to JPMorgan Chase. The PCard is a safe and easy-to-use payment method and it can be used anywhere MasterCard is accepted. The use of PCards provides an alternative method for items not available on Amazon for Business and SmartMart, while also providing an efficient method for purchasing items less than $5,000. The university also offers Travel Cards (TCards), which are the preferred method for buying travel and travel-related services.
     
  • The Stanford Travel Program is the required booking method when faculty, staff, postdoctoral scholars and students are booking airfare, hotels, or rental cars for university-sponsored travel. Booking through Stanford Travel transmits reservations automatically to the university’s Travel Registry (which supports travelers in event of emergency), reduces administrative burden, and provides access to Stanford-negotiated rates.
Financial approvers play a critical role in the purchasing process. In addition to ensuring proper documentation for each expense, financial approvers are responsible for verifying that expenditures charged to their PTAEs are:
  • Reasonable and necessary.
  • Consistent with established university policies and practices.
  • Consistent with sponsor or donor expenditure restrictions.
Additional considerations to ensure spending is appropriate, correct, reasonable and within policy can be found in Proper Use of Funds. Approvers and finance managers are encouraged to guide business units to efficient purchasing routes and ensure that they understand why non-standard or alternate methods have been chosen.

For more resources, check out the Buy and Pay Guide on Fingate for a comprehensive list of commonly purchased goods and services, the recommended purchasing method and related expenditure types listed from A to Z, and the Fingate Topic Overview: Purchasing and Payment Methods.

The Financial Support Center is available to assist with questions surrounding purchasing, business and travel expense policies and procedures. As a reminder, concerns around financial transactions should always be raised to management or reported to the University Ethics & Compliance Helpline.
In Partnership for Excellence
This article is brought to you by Financial Management Services and the Office of Development

Best Practices for Processing Donor Gifts

Stanford receives over 80,000 gifts a year from donors who support students, drive groundbreaking research and advance solutions to address societal challenges. The staff who manage these funds play a critical role in ensuring excellence in the stewardship of these vital gifts.
The first step for that stewardship is to make sure gifts are deposited into the right funds. With thousands of active gifts and endowments, it can sometimes be difficult to know whether a gift should be added to an existing fund or established in a new one.

The Office of Development and Financial Management Services have collaborated on an article that provides departments with some best practices and helpful tips to support excellence in gift funds management, including those that help answer the following:
  • How do you decide where a new gift should be directed?
  • What happens if a gift goes to the wrong fund?
To see the guidance and tips, read the full article on Best Practices for Processing Donor Gifts.

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