How do procurement cards work?
Purchase cards (“p-cards”) are charge cards that work in a similar way to personal credit cards and can be used to purchase goods or services. They are used to make purchases on behalf of the council and the council pays the card statement. They can be treated like traditional charge cards and can be open for use with any supplier or they can have restrictions placed upon them by the council limiting their use to certain commodities or suppliers. A typical p-card purchasing process would appear as follows: Step 1. Goods / services are ordered by telephone, over the internet, by fax or in person using the p-card Step 2. Purchase recorded by the card holder (council staff) onto an electronic purchase log Step 3. Goods / services are received Step 4. Supplier paid by the card issuing bank Step 5. The council receives a statement from the card issuing bank Step 6. This statement is automatically matched to the purchase log Step 7. Discrepancies between the purchase log and the statement ar
