Company Credit Cards

[superbigal]

I can't rightly say I have ever used mine for

• a driving theory test for a fellow member of staff
• china crockery for a meeting room
• nail polish
• yoga class
• £1.59 leaving card
• £27 "homedisco" from eBay
• £272 on "wellington boots for inspections"
• ping pong balls, chocolate mice, play dough or paper planes.

Saying that i do not work in the Public sector where this may be the norm ?

What interesting purchases do you make on your company credit card ?

 

[Boo Khaki]

Quote

Saying that i do not work in the Public sector where this may be the norm ?

I don't know if it's the 'norm', but I know from experience that public sector staff, especially senior ones, will utterly take the piss with 'company' cards if you let them. They also do not react well to being pulled up about it.

[scottsdad]

I'll speak for the defence, m'lud. I was a government scientist from 2006-2013 and had a GPC (Government procurement card). Mostly it was used for travel stuff. The government had contracts with travel companies but it was always cheaper (to the taxpayer, mind) to use the GPC than to use the system. For instance, in those days if I had to go to London I could book a flight online with EasyJet for about £100.  Or, with the official travel agent, they'd put me on a BA flight for £400 (I could often see the same flight advertised for less, too). 

As a scientist, I bought tons of weird shit, and can imagine the stuff hitting the papers. "Why are the government buying acid/latex gloves/test tubes/ on credit cards" would hit the news, for sure. Then we get into some stuff I was specifically looking at - shellac springs to mind. Mortars. Animal parts. A shed. Taken in isolation some of these can look very strange indeed. 

13 minutes ago, superbigal said:

£272 on "wellington boots for inspections"

Arco in Linlithgow was used for me and my team. Safety boots for site visits, waterproof jackets, PPE, hats, gloves, the lot. 

[Brother Blades]

I once mistakenly used my CCC to pay a bar bill, it was a large bar bill, very large. 

I noticed the mistake & informed the company & paid the money back, I was later informed it had already been approved & if I kept my mouth shut it would never have been noticed. Ffs! 

[Gnash]

I used to work in the cost management area and we could, and sometimes did, go through statements with a fine-toothed comb.  I know of a few chancers that were quite rightly given the boot.

[Silvio Tattiescone]

A colleague paid for lap dancers on his company card.

 

Very much an ex-colleague now.

[scottsdad]

1 minute ago, Newbornbairn said:

A colleague paid for lap dancers on his company card.

 

Very much an ex-colleague now.

Just swipe it between the cheeks...

[alta-pete]

Back in the day when in paid employment we’d get a doing at the monthly meeting if we hadn’t spunked enough money on entertainment. Spends on mental drinking sessions and lap dancing was very much fair game -and even heartily encouraged -but your end of spunking the company money was that you then had to convert a noticeable portion of your guests to paying clients very quickly thereafter. 

[Leith Green]

39 minutes ago, Newbornbairn said:

A colleague paid for lap dancers on his company card.

 

Very much an ex-colleague now.

Happened in a place I used to work at too, back in the day when entertaining clients included the pubic triangle.

Cant say anyone got fired, as the bosses of those doing it were pretty awful people and signed off anything.

Once had my company CC cloned in London  - finance called me one day and asked why I had bought 35 pizzas for delivery in Croydon 

[Boo Khaki]

1 hour ago, scottsdad said:

I'll speak for the defence, m'lud. I was a government scientist from 2006-2013 and had a GPC (Government procurement card). Mostly it was used for travel stuff. The government had contracts with travel companies but it was always cheaper (to the taxpayer, mind) to use the GPC than to use the system. For instance, in those days if I had to go to London I could book a flight online with EasyJet for about £100.  Or, with the official travel agent, they'd put me on a BA flight for £400 (I could often see the same flight advertised for less, too). 

As a scientist, I bought tons of weird shit, and can imagine the stuff hitting the papers. "Why are the government buying acid/latex gloves/test tubes/ on credit cards" would hit the news, for sure. Then we get into some stuff I was specifically looking at - shellac springs to mind. Mortars. Animal parts. A shed. Taken in isolation some of these can look very strange indeed. 

Arco in Linlithgow was used for me and my team. Safety boots for site visits, waterproof jackets, PPE, hats, gloves, the lot. 

All of this is largely sensible and reasonable, however, having once been the guy with the unfortunate job of having to actually pay the bills you run up, and regularly entertain a firm of Auditors crawling all over my office, it also includes a fair few of the bugbears that public sector staff 'in the field' don't seem to grasp about public finance, and why you can't just go slapping anything and everything on Credit Cards, even when they are issued by your work.

GPC is slightly different, because in my case I'm talking about directorate credit cards that were solely intended for one-off small purchases where there was no preferred supplier, or payment was not possible by regular means.

Yes, it's undoubtedly cheaper for you to book online with Easyjet than it is for the 'company' to book that for you, however, in order to spend public money on staff travel, there must first of all be a tendering process for the contract for that service, and you diving on Easyjet's website off your own back is completely outside of that legally required process. 

Same story for the 'tons of weird shit' you bought, most of which I've paid bills for at one time or another. However, most places will have preferred suppliers for pharmaceutical equipment, lab equipment, chemicals, and even animal parts, who have been through that tender process, so the first things my Auditors are going to ask when they see the receipts for 'tons of weird shit', is "who the f**k has been ignoring procurement procedure". Also, even where when the purchases are perfectly justified, I have to then go and figure out how the f**k to charge that credit card payment to your cost centre and assure it's taken from the correct budget, when following procurement procedure ensures that automatically.

The other common problem with your approach, is that I lost count the number of times I was asked to call a company and arrange the return and refund of a item that was not fit for purpose. Of course, the only reason for this was that someone had, once again, totally ignored procurement procedure, which would have guaranteed the delivery of a perfectly fit for purpose item, and instead bought something off their own back. The histrionics from very senior people when I explained to them that, no, I was not going to be able to arrange return and refund because the purchase was outside of procedure and the company has refused, and that no, you will not be getting that spend put back into your annual budget regardless, was always an interesting watch. Very senior scientists do not like being told by a finance pleb "Tough shit matey, your f**k up, and I'm sick of explaining this shit you, and then watching you just ignore it and do your own thing regardless".

There's nothing egregious in your examples, aside from the issues with ignoring tendered contracts, however, the sort of thing that used to pop up frequently was a scenario whereby some very senior public sector staff would be hosting their counterparts from another nation's public sector. Of course, this sort of 'networking' invariably involves dinners, a few glasses of plonk, hotels, taxis, and so forth. I can not pay for alcohol with public money, unless the very small 'corporate hospitality' budget is used, and only then if the alcohol is not expressly listed on the invoice itself. "Dinner x4", fine, "Dinner x4 + 4 bottles of wine", nope. Again, more histrionics when the bill would get KB'd and these people on salaries miles beyond six figures would have to foot the bill from their own pockets, and again, despite this already having been explained to them a million times over.

You might think "FFS that is ridiculous and you are being petty", but I would point you back to that firm of Auditors. Who loses their job when the illegal spends get flagged up and then possibly faces charges? It's not the Directors or senior scientists who actually ignored procedure, nope, it's muggins here with his signature on the payment. Hence why I invariably told them to f**k right off.

Edited August 9, 2023 by Boo Khaki

[Silvio Tattiescone]

23 minutes ago, Boo Khaki said:

All of this is largely sensible and reasonable, however, having once been the guy with the unfortunate job of having to actually pay the bills you run up, and regularly entertain a firm of Auditors crawling all over my office, it also includes a fair few of the bugbears that public sector staff 'in the field' don't seem to grasp about public finance, and why you can't just go slapping anything and everything on Credit Cards, even when they are issued by your work.

GPC is slightly different, because in my case I'm talking about directorate credit cards that were solely intended for one-off small purchases where there was no preferred supplier, or payment was not possible by regular means.

Yes, it's undoubtedly cheaper for you to book online with Easyjet than it is for the 'company' to book that for you, however, in order to spend public money on staff travel, there must first of all be a tendering process for the contract for that service, and you diving on Easyjet's website off your own back is completely outside of that legally required process. 

Same story for the 'tons of weird shit' you bought, most of which I've paid bills for at one time or another. However, most places will have preferred suppliers for pharmaceutical equipment, lab equipment, chemicals, and even animal parts, who have been through that tender process, so the first things my Auditors are going to ask when they see the receipts for 'tons of weird shit', is "who the f**k has been ignoring procurement procedure". Also, even where when the purchases are perfectly justified, I have to then go and figure out how the f**k to charge that credit card payment to your cost centre and assure it's taken from the correct budget, when following procurement procedure ensures that automatically.

The other common problem with your approach, is that I lost count the number of times I was asked to call a company and arrange the return and refund of a item that was not fit for purpose. Of course, the only reason for this was that someone had, once again, totally ignored procurement procedure, which would have guaranteed the delivery of a perfectly fit for purpose item, and instead bought something off their own back. The histrionics from very senior people when I explained to them that, no, I was not going to be able to arrange return and refund because the purchase was outside of procedure and the company has refused, and that no, you will not be getting that spend put back into your annual budget regardless, was always an interesting watch. Very senior scientists do not like being told by a finance pleb "Tough shit matey, your f**k up, and I'm sick of explaining this shit you, and then watching you just ignore it and do your own thing regardless".

There's nothing egregious in your examples, aside from the issues with ignoring tendered contracts, however, the sort of thing that used to pop up frequently was a scenario whereby some very senior public sector staff would be hosting their counterparts from another nation's public sector. Of course, this sort of 'networking' invariably involves dinners, a few glasses of plonk, hotels, taxis, and so forth. I can not pay for alcohol with public money, unless the very small 'corporate hospitality' budget is used, and only then if the alcohol is not expressly listed on the invoice itself. "Dinner x4", fine, "Dinner x4 + 4 bottles of wine", nope. Again, more histrionics when the bill would get KB'd and these people on salaries miles beyond six figures would have to foot the bill from their own pockets, and again, despite this already having been explained to them a million times over.

You might think "FFS that is ridiculous and you are being petty", but I would point you back to that firm of Auditors. Who loses their job when the illegal spends get flagged up and then possibly faces charges? It's not the Directors or senior scientists who actually ignored procedure, nope, it's muggins here with his signature on the payment. Hence why I invariably told them to f**k right off.

[alta-pete]

[TxRover]

The other aspect of a Government Credit Card, at least once you get into the 100,000 employee plus Agencies, is the typically slow rate of reimbursement. Charge in May, have to pay yourself in June, reimbursed in August wasn’t rare for traveling. And the costs for hotels and flights were the ones that most often took the longest.

[Flatulent Gannet]

When working for the NHS, I once had to buy 10 Mr Potato Heads.

They were to be used in Teamwork excecises, when I questioned it, I was told to just get on with it. Think they are still unopened in a cupboard somewhere.

[Fullerene]

1 hour ago, alta-pete said:

Back in the day when in paid employment we’d get a doing at the monthly meeting if we hadn’t spunked enough money on entertainment. Spends on mental drinking sessions and lap dancing was very much fair game -and even heartily encouraged -but your end of spunking the company money was that you then had to convert a noticeable portion of your guests to paying clients very quickly thereafter. 

Make sure you provide a pie chart.  They like that.

 

[Wee-Bey]

I have a GPC. Use it for booking training courses for staff.

Spoiler

And hookers and ching obvs

 

[Fullerene]

14 hours ago, Flatulent Gannet said:

When working for the NHS, I once had to buy 10 Mr Potato Heads.

They were to be used in Teamwork exercises, when I questioned it, I was told to just get on with it. Think they are still unopened in a cupboard somewhere.

Have you never watched Toy Story?

Better take them out of the boxes if you expect them to do anything.

[Melanius Mullarkey]

8 minutes ago, Fullerene said:

Have you never watched Toy Story?

Better take them out of the boxes if you expect them to do anything.

Do anything? That’s senior management you’re talking about.

[The Moonster]

An engineer at my old work was morbidly alcoholic. He was sent to Iceland to do a job that would take him only 1 day. He racked up a 5 grand bar bill with the group of folk he got talking to in the bar and then tried to claim it was fraud. That led to the MD of the company contacting the bar directly, they returned them CCTV footage of this c**t walking around with bottles of champagne and an accompanying message that said they had to eventually refuse him alcohol as his behaviour was out of order. He was sacked pretty quickly but I'm sure he had a good night. 

[O'Kelly Isley III]

7 minutes ago, The Moonster said:

An engineer at my old work was morbidly alcoholic. He was sent to Iceland to do a job that would take him only 1 day. He racked up a 5 grand bar bill with the group of folk he got talking to in the bar and then tried to claim it was fraud. That led to the MD of the company contacting the bar directly, they returned them CCTV footage of this c**t walking around with bottles of champagne and an accompanying message that said they had to eventually refuse him alcohol as his behaviour was out of order. He was sacked pretty quickly but I'm sure he had a good night. 

Five grand would have bought the whole branch of Iceland.