Faster payments for smaller businesses
Friday, 27 March 2020
The University is offering faster payments for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) who supply goods and services to us.
This is among a range of initiatives announced by our Finance and Procurement teams to support SMEs and enable colleagues to continue buying essential equipment and services.
SMEs are important to our University and we want to make sure they feel supported by us in the current situation. We consider someone we spend £5000 a week or less on an SME.
Starting immediately, all approved invoices raised by an SME will be paid on the next available payment run with no respect to their contractually due date. Approval means that the goods/services have been received by the University.
Our payment run takes places on Wednesday and Friday, and all invoices and suppliers will be included in this.
The reduced terms of payment will only work for SMEs. The other suppliers will be paid on their due date.
Ordering goods home
In normal circumstances, we discourage the delivery of University-purchased goods to a location outside of our campuses. Given the current circumstances, however, we are allowing requests for some items to be delivered to home addresses.
A majority of home delivery requests seem related to IT equipment. Supplies of such equipment is limited at the moment, and we would advised colleagues to help us prioritise the supply chain. If you urgently need to purchase a portable device, monitor, tablet or phone equipment and for it to be delivered to your home address, please contact Aaron Kingsbury (a.d.kingsbury@reading.ac.uk) in Digital Technology Services (DTS). This process will require additional procedure to our standard purchases, that DTS will advise you on.
Any IT peripherals should be purchased via XMA using the University standard policies and procedures.
For anything other than IT items that need to be delivered to your home, please email Procurement (procurement@reading.ac.uk) before placing the order.
Supplier contracts
If you are reviewing the contracts you have in place to deliver goods, services and works to either vary them or cancel them you are advised to seek advice from Procurement prior to doing so. If you are not sure who in the team looks after the particular contract area please check out the details on Procurement contact details and contact the team either by email or via teams, or you can email procurement@reading.ac.uk