I am working with a university for the first time. They want to pay me via purchase order, but the process on their end seems to take forever and I don’t get why? Isn’t the money already there and that the school has already given green light for the purchase? What am I missing?
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With a PO the buying is a little different than when you order something.
In general the buyer has to follow a request from a department and the department doesn’t buy it themselves. They have to follow guidelines and buy for example the best price, this doesn’t mean the cheapest price.
When they decided on the seller, and it’s not the one the ordering department asked for, they have to communicate. When the order is made they have to communicate with the ordering department, accounting and more. When the package is on the way they have to communicate with only God knows. When the item made it to the university the shipping department gets it, communicates with the buying department checks with who God knows, double checks and triple checks the items, sends it to the department to have it double and triple checked.
They tell the buyer it’s ok which tells accounting it’s ok which then has 30 days to pay you.
So the communication is just more as each department has to communicate with each other department.
But on the good side if it worked out for them and the quality was good, they might add you to the list of approved sellers and some of that communication will stop making everything faster on both sides.
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