I have a concern about something that is going on at work.
I am a hardware development engineer at a large corporation, and my group is
starting up a new project. We have a lot of equipment lying around in the lab,
and most of it can be re purposed for the new program, but there are a lot of
incidentals, miscellaneous supplies and stuff. Most of this can be bought on line
from Amazon and various specialty suppliers. However, my boss refuses to spend
the money via the usual ordering process. He says it is too inconvenient and
takes too much of his time. He wants us to buy the supplies out of pocket, and
submit expense reports for eventual reimbursement.
The items I am speaking of are general office and lab supplies, like solder,
miscellaneous components, some relatively cheap computer parts. The sort of stuff
you need to keep a lab running.
There are several problems with this idea from my perspective. Firstly, I have
no guarantee that I will ever be reimbursed. The process of submitting expenses
is a bit arcane, and the accountants are prone to rejecting expenses
capriciously. Secondly the incidental expenses for this new project could end
up running into the hundreds of dollars (Potentially thousands if we are going
to do this right, but there’s no danger of that) per month, and I don’t want to
front the company the money. This is a company with a multi-billion market
capitalization, they shouldn’t need to borrow money from me. Thirdly, the
expenses are not approved by my boss, they are signed off by his boss, and he
tends to have a somewhat poor attitude to the minutia of management, after all
he’s a busy man. Too busy to do his actual job, several times I have had
expenses rejected on the first go around because he didn’t approve them in a
timely manner.
So, I guess my question is, is this sort of thing common in industry these days?
And would you put up this kind of thing?
As far as what I intend to do about it, my attitude right now is that I will
request the items I need from my boss. If he can’t provide, we will have to live
without, even if it does cause a schedule hit. Or I can always steal stuff from
the lab on the other floor. They’re used to it by now.
That’s been my answer too, mostly. My boss seems to be trying to make me out to be the unreasonable one here.
The problem is that I do want to see this effort succeed. It won’t though, unless management get their collective heads out of each other’s butts and start actually managing.
On the other hand, I figure we have about another year before it all hits the fan. And they haven’t actually bounced the paychecks yet. As a colleague of mine put it, “For a dollar an hour more, I clean the shitters.”
Check your company’s policies; mine specifically says we are not to buy and expense stuff needed for work. A big reason to discourage this sort of thing is that doing so makes it harder to track and allocate the expense to the budget.
Now, we have bought stuff on credit cards and submitted expense reports, but only in extraordinary circumstances. (Like when that key piece of equipment died and someone had to run to an electronics warehouse to get something obscure we needed to fix it.)
Yeah, that was my first reaction too. He didn’t take it well. I think he is feeling the pressure from both sides.
I am willing to go along with this in some very limited cases. I recently needed a USB cable right now, and went over to the Walmart and bought one and submit the expense report. It cost $10, and I did eventually get paid for it. It took a few weeks though.
That’s OK for emergency situations, and for small amounts. I have a problem with it when my boss wants to extend that to forseeable expenses that might run into the hundreds of dollars.
My strategy until now was passive resistance. I let my boss know what we needed, and failed to hear him when he suggested I go out and buy it. The other day that strategy hit a limit. I had to tell my boss directly that I wouldn’t spend $300 on lab supplies on my own hook and wait to be paid back when the company gets around to it. The result of that conversation is still to be seen. I await events on Monday with baited breath.
Tell him you’re supporting a sick Auntie and you just don’t have the required cash resources to do so. Happy to go pick it up with his cash flow though, if he’d like that!
Never stray from the script. Stick to it, every time he asks.
So I’m getting the impression that this isn’t common in the new corporate environment?
I don’t know personally. We used to be a small company, a “start up” who got bought out recently. The way it used to work was my boss had a company credit card and was trusted to manage the money for his group. This worked pretty well. We told him what we needed, and if he agreed he bought it. He didn’t always agree of course, he was after all a responsible steward of the company’s money. But we managed to get the job done.
Now that we got bought out, he has no signature authority, he has to put all expenditures through this complicated SAP system that doesn’t seem to work half the time. So he looks for work arounds.
I intend to continue the passive resistance strategy. It’s about all I can do, I think.
I suppose if you know you will be compensated and the amount is not too great you could go ahead and make these purchases. Given that the first part is uncertain and it doesn’t sound like you’ll get any credit for going above and beyond then it’s not a good idea, especially since you can perform and interdepartmental re-allocation of resources instead.
Is it common practice? I wouldn’t say common for financially stable companies but it’s done in startups and when there is extreme time pressure. In this case it sounds like it’s the boss’s job to do it himself anyway even if it is a practice of your company. He’s management, when there’s risk involved, even if it’s small, it’s his job to accept the burden.
OTOH, if it made my job easier and the amounts were small I’d just do it and avoid the distraction of dealing with the problem. And mean “I”, not that anyone else has a good reason to feel the same way.
IMHO you’re right to be concerned. In fact, you should be very concerned indeed and should start scoping out a job move, because this sort of behaviour in a larger company bespeaks cash flow problems and suppliers being unwilling to do business with the company because they’re not getting paid.
For small amounts, and if it is needed quickly, I can do that. The problem is that the last time I had to do that, the expense got rejected because my boss’s boss was traveling and didn’t approve the expense in a timely manner. I did eventually get the money, but I had to resubmit the expense, and hound my boss’s boss until he approved it.
I just have an issue when my boss wants me to buy $300 worth of computer parts for a project that we are setting up for that will start sometime in the fall. This is a forseeable expense, and I think he should be following the proper corporate procedures even if it is inconvenient for him.
Of course it’s never quite black and white. If I don’t buy the stuff, the project will take a little longer, and it might require more manpower since we won’t be able to automate some stuff. It won’t all come to a stop, it will just be harder to do.
I suppose my boss could make the case that his time is more valuable than my time. I think I will have other plans the next time he asks me to put in extended hours. My boss has the great excuse that he takes the train to work and has to leave every day exactly on the train schedule.
I guess I know the answer here. I will do what is necessary for small, cheap stuff that is needed quickly and push back on more expensive longer term stuff. I will have to do my best to hold the line when my boss tries to blur the distinction between them. It’s just more stress at work.
Who is trained to submit orders the normal way? If your boss is but you are not, it might be worthwhile for you to get the training and authorization to submit purchase requests. I used to ask my team lead to order stuff for us, but she was busy, so now we do it ourselves.
We are all new to this company, and I don’t have any idea what the procedure is. That’s a good idea though, I shall look into it. It’s just that the way our group worked before, was that the boss handled the money, and we did the work.
Things are different now and we will all have to adapt. My boss’s boss has bought into all the Silicon Valley hype. He wants us to be “lean” “agile” “disruptive.” But don’t rock the boat.
It is absolutely not normal behavior, and I would certainly not put up with it.
It could be a sign of a number of things. It could be a sign that the company as a whole is struggling, and not paying its suppliers in a timely fashion; or perhaps your boss does not have a budget approved for the project, and is playing for time.
If it’s the kind of project where items are often needed urgently, and they want you to just buy them yourself, then they should issue you with a company credit card to make those purchases. You’ll still have to fill out documentation for the expense, but you’re not out of pocket. I would just request a company credit card from your boss. That addresses his assertion that it’s just a question of avoiding administrative hassle. If he won’t give you one, I would flat refuse to make purchases on your own dime.
This what corporate credit cards are designed for, just this kind of thing. This whole “pay out of your pocket for supplies” thing is insane for a billion dollar sized corporation. See accounting about getting a corporate credit card for these kind of expenses.
Getting a corporate credit card is out. Only people at my boss’s boss level and up are allowed to have them. Yes there are several major cost cutting initiatives going on. We are getting constantly harangued about keeping costs under control. Which is one reason I am reluctant to lend them money.
It kind of blew up on Friday when I flatly told my boss I wasn’t going to buy anything more for the company with my own money and wait for reimbursement.
Thanks for the feedback. I’m glad to hear that this isn’t just my imagination. It’s too easy for this kind of thing to come to seem normal.
Right, and if your company doesn’t trust you to make reasonable purchases on the corporate credit card, how are they going to trust you to make reasonable purchases out of pocket and then get reimbursed?
If you can’t be trusted to make small purchases, then you can’t be trusted, and somebody else needs to sign off on every purchase before you make it.
Lots of people are in jobs where they don’t need a company credit card, and they have to keep track of that shit, but your boss needs to decide if you’re inside or outside, and get his boss to approve it. If he can’t get his boss to approve it, then how can he say that his boss will approve your out of pocket expenses?
So if you can’t get a corporate credit card, can they arrange for company accounts at the suppliers? That would allow you to buy stuff without fronting the cash.