Just the Essentials

With anticipated budget cuts on the horizon, CTAHR’s Administrative Services has provided new guidance on what is considered an essential purchase:

• If your purchase is paid for from your extramural contract or grant (including capacity funds), there are no restrictions on your spending  other than following the sponsor’s terms and conditions of award.
• Purchases using Tuition (TFSF) or Research and Training Revolving Funds (RTRF) MUST be essential. If you placed your order prior to March 24, 2020 (with a fully executed Purchase Order) and your purchase is in transit and cannot be cancelled, then you are allowed to proceed.
• If your order was placed March 24, 2020, or later, President Lassner requested that you take any additional measure feasible to cancel the purchase if it is a non‐ essential expenditure.

What is considered essential? Please ask yourself the following questions:

• Do I absolutely need to make this purchase to do my job? For instance, if it’s a new computer, do I truly need it right now? If the answer is no, then it’s not an essential purchase at this time.
• Is there an alternative way that I can do my job or execute my task while deferring the purchase? If the answer is yes, then it’s not an essential purchase.

When considering these questions, everyone is encouraged to be as realistic and conservative as possible: “We need to be good stewards of the tuition and tax payer dollars that we are allocated to function with, and we all want what is best for the greater good of the University, with the least amount of impact on our employees.

“The single most important goal is to preserve permanent and temporary jobs, graduate assistantships, lectureships, and student labor for the rest of this fiscal year and into the next fiscal year.”

Read the full memo here.