Introduction
You must:
- keep a record of all purchases and cash withdrawals you make using the purchase card
- review and reconcile all purchases at the end of each month.
How to record and reconcile purchases
Follow the steps below to correctly record and reconcile your purchases.
1Record a purchase
Card purchases
For card purchases you will need to provide the following details:
- order date
- supplier name
- description of purchase
- order reference code
- date that the goods were received
- cost, including and excluding VAT.
Cash withdrawals
Cash withdrawals are recorded on the second tab of the spreadsheet. You will need to provide:
- date of cash withdrawal
- amount withdrawn
- purchase amount
- description of purchase
- cost and detail code.
2Instruction
You must log in to Smart Data (provided by the Royal Bank of Scotland) at least once a month to:
- check that the credit card activity matches the information on your transaction and cash withdrawal log
- add any transactions you have missed to your spreadsheet
- make sure there has been no fraudulent activity on your account.
For each transaction, you must:
- provide a description
- check that the VAT amount and coding is correct
- upload a receipt
- mark that you have reviewed the transaction.
Transaction cycle
The transaction cycle for purchase cards runs from the 29th until the 28th of every month.
This means by 28th of the month you must make sure:
- you have reviewed all credit card activity
- the purchase card approver has reviewed and approved all transactions.
You will receive a reminder via email each month.
VAT claims
As a council, we can reclaim VAT shown on supplier invoices and receipts. You can find out more about what is required to claim VAT in the document below:
3Approval process
Once the cardholder has reviewed the transactions, the nominated purchase card approver must log in to SmartData (provided by the Royal Bank of Scotland) and complete the approval process.
The following document will guide you through the approval process:
4Budget monitoring
At the end of the transaction cycle, the purchase card activity for the month will be exported from SmartData to East Riding financials for budget monitoring.