U.S. mines p-card data for fraud and spend control.(Procurement Cards)

Purchasing, September, 2004 by Gottlieb, Daniel

When the federal government introduced procurement cards in 1989, the goals were to scrap mounds of paperwork for low dollar buys, speed up fulfillment, and cut transaction costs. Those objectives have been largely achieved. Savings for FY 2003 were approximately $1.4 billion with purchase card orders valued around $16.3 billion. Now agencies are being pressured by Congress to look for even more savings by using P-card purchasing volume to leverage discounts from suppliers. Congress' watchdog, the Government Accountability Office (renamed from the Government Accounting Office) in a review of a handful of agencies, found that if they sought a 10% discount from suppliers, the savings would total $300 million annually.

P-cards have made it possible for a...

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