By Vicky Falcón
NAVAIR Public Affairs Office

Every purchase your office makes by credit card will be scrutinized sometime during the next six months. Does that make you think twice about what you’re ordering? It should!

A semi-annual review of NAVAIR’s Purchase Card program was recently held and the results showed the program continues to improve – from great to even better.

According to Tom Maras, AIR-2.1 procurement analyst and NAVAIR agency purchase card program coordinator, NAVAIR has an extremely low number of “questionable” transactions – unintentional or intentional misuse or abuse of the purchase card.

“If you look at private industry, keeping the number of questionable transactions below 3% of the total is considered quite an accomplishment,” said Maras. “NAVAIR’s questionable transactions are consistently less than two-tenths of a percent.”

In fact, Maras said, in the past four years NAVAIR has cut questionable transactions in half.

“I’m very proud of what we’ve done,” said Maras. “This is a tremendous accomplishment.”

Reducing the number of cardholders from 1,479 (three years ago) to 846 today has helped to bring all transactions under closer examination.

According to Maras, fewer cardholders mean less people in the program, less people to train and more control over how the cards are used.

Though the number of cardholders has gone down, the number of transactions remains pretty much the same, Maras said. Those 845 cardholders are responsible for procuring commercial supplies and services at ten NAVAIR sites. From September 22, 2004 – March 21, 2005, more than 57,000 transactions occurred, purchasing a total of $54 million in supplies and services.

“Though we’re doing exceptionally well there is always room for improvement,” said Maras. He’s especially concerned about some ongoing misuses of the purchase card.

“The three main misuses discovered during this review,” Maras explained, “were the splitting of requirements to circumvent the procurement regulations; the purchase of prohibited items; and the purchase of items intended for personal use.”

Splitting of requirements occur when a purchase is intentionally broken into more than one purchase to stay within a threshold (i.e. the $2500 micro-purchase threshold) or to avoid having to send the requirement to the contracting officer.

Prohibited items include those that are not commercial items or require a specification or certificate of conformance. Any purchase that requires a contract clause is also prohibited. Some examples of prohibited items include: advance payments, advertising, building or land rentals or leases, Christmas decorations and coffee supplies and refreshments. For a more complete list of prohibited items, go to https://contracts.navair.navy.mil/pcardindex.cfm.

Personal items are items that are for personal, not for government, use. If an item is used for personal and government use, the item is considered a personal item. Samples of personal items include briefcases, business cards and clothing.

“We’d just like all NAVAIR employees to think how a purchase will be viewed by an auditor and act accordingly before they place an order using the purchase card. This means get an opinion from your legal counsel or your Purchase Card Program Coordinator if you aren’t sure if a purchase is questionable. Keep that opinion in your file so you can show it to the auditor when questions come up about your purchase.” said Maras. “Our goal is continue to reduce questionable transactions until they disappear from our reports – completely.”

For more information about the purchase card program, go to the Web site listed above.