PCard Policy

All staff with a PCard may assist faculty, postdocs, students, and staff with purchases, subject to
the policies outlined in this document. All purchase requests must be initiated with an email
to cmse_staff@egr.msu.edu. This purchase request must include the following information:
1. An approved MSU account number, listed at the top of the request;
2. A description of the item to be purchased, along with relevant links; and
3. The business purpose of the purchase.
Acceptable purchase requests may include conference registration fees, supplies, or books. In the
following procedure, “purchaser” refers to the person initiating the purchase request.
Any deviation from this procedure requires the prior explicit written permission of the CMSE
chair or associate chair.

 

Postdocs and Students 

All postdoc/student purchase requests must copy the cognizant account owner on the initiating
email described above. The account owner must reply to this email (copied to
cmse_staff@egr.msu.edu) with a statement of approval. The purchase cannot begin until the
approval of the account owner is received by the staff handling the request. When the purchase is
charged to a fellowship, then the postdoc or student is considered the account owner.

Collection of receipts 

If the vendor is sending a digital receipt to the purchaser, the purchaser must meet with the staff
member and be present during the purchase. The purchaser must send the digital receipt to the
staff member before leaving. This will most likely happen with conference registration.

 

Retention of records

All approved PCard purchase requests are to be saved as a pdf in the EBS/PCard/Requests folder
on the general department shared drive. Staff must also record the purchases on their individual
log for audit purposes.