Hacker News Reader

Comment by randyrand | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

Yes I'm sure your business spends roughly $10 trillion a year so the federal government should use your system because it scales so well.

If anything, such an extensive system should have better controls than a small business. Given that, there are trillions of dollars flowing around of other people's money.

You're falling for the sleight of hand if you think this is where bulk of the waste is.

Have you worked for the federal government? Employees literally have to fill out forms and follow a strict process to buy anything when they don't have these charge cards.

If my experience in non-federal government is any guide, they have similar requirements when they use the card, the difference is that it is after the fact and if the application gets rejected, the payment is the employee’s responsibility. The amount of red tape is the same either way, but with the caed the red tape happens after the purchase.

With the card, the urgent next-day-delivery order is already on its way while the red tape waits for approval. And the worker enters the order into the supplier's website directly.

With a standard order, the urgent order is entered into Oracle Financials, waiting for approval, and some time during office hours in the next 1-2 days someone in finance will copy the order into the supplier's website, omitting one order line by accident.

The federal government actually operates in the opposite way. They cosign a credit card under your name, you have to pay it off at the end of every month, and they reimburse you after the fact.

That's pretty much the mechanism of acheiving the effect that I was describing on State governments I’ve seen, too. I was just trying to generalize on the level of responsibility, rather than detailed payment flow.

Exactly. That's why there are charge cards.

I suspect that a charge on the card involves at least 15 seconds of writing down what the charge was for.

The point of giving employees the authority to spend from charge card without excessive additional oversight is to keep it at the 2-3 minutes (realistically it's going to be at least that, not "15 seconds") per expense, rather than 2-3 hours of bureaucracy.

I have a company credit card. Guess what I do for every transaction?

Per transaction.

You know what’s way more efficient though?

Cards.

Part of the effeminacy is they get what they need now not some time in the future. The old school requisition systems where everything had to be approved in advance and the purchase handled by a purchasing agent was slow and inefficient for small orders. Which is why organizations give their employees a card with a spending limit.

Exactly, automation.

Your little tin-pot business has absolutely nothing to do with the procurement formalities of a large organisation.

Apparently some of the transactions were in strip clubs. I'd be willing to bet that the procurement formalities of a small business of quite a bit in common with the formalities of a large business...

As if you don't have to do that when using a govt credit card for expenses.

You own a “business” that’s clearly just you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com