Board discusses open purchase orders, warning flags and account coding

Committee members pressed staff about a set of open purchase orders that had triggered warning flags for exceeding cut amounts. One board member asked whether the PO overage could be “a substantial number” given how many open POs exist. “That 10 though, that could with the number of these each month, that could be a substantial number,” the committee member said.

Staff explained most of the flagged items are maintenance or blanket purchase orders that are later allocated to school location codes and that accounts appear different because location codes are appended after the initial PO. The staff member said the district corrects PO limits as invoices arrive and that the 10% overage threshold is the control in use. The board reviewed specific pages of the PO report and staff pointed to examples of how account numbers and PO numbers differ until allocations are applied.