Reply to post: Re: What budget?

A basement of broken kit, zero budget – now get the team running

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Re: What budget?

Even worse, when I was in a management position at a university if I didn't spend all the money in my budget it would be CUT the following year - since I obviously didn't need that much money! So what I was told to do by my superiors was to make sure I spent all the money in my budget no matter what, then try to push through a PO with two weeks to go that would put me 5-10% over the limit at the end of the fiscal year. It would be rejected, but it would increase my chances of getting a larger budget in the following fiscal year.

Stupidity.

What's worse, since IT equipment was going down in price and up in performance so rapidly (this was in the late 90s) the difference between buying something in the first month and last month of the fiscal year was often quite significant. And since the fiscal year started on July 1st, it made sense to buy in May and make changes over the summer breaks since you didn't want to try doing it during the very busy fall/spring semesters (and you didn't want to do it over the holidays for obvious reasons)

So on more than one occasion I'd have like 20% of my budget spent with two months left, and then spend 80% of it all at once. I got called to the carpet by the finance people for this on more than one occasion, but after the first tongue lashing I made sure to get quotes at the beginning of the fiscal year and end of the fiscal year for my needs - showing them I could upgrade 50% more workstations by waiting shut them up.

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