You can ask anyone to run out and buy (for example) phone credit, tea and coffee, or a couple light bulbs. Click here for the procedure for this.
But beware…
If you have a large staff, things might get out of hand. You might have so many staff out there buying things that you can’t keep enough cash in the office and you can’t keep track of spending.
If things get out of hand you can:
- Limit who is allowed to make purchases to a few specific staff on a list,
- Tell staff for what kinds of things staff are allowed to claim expenses (and what they can’t claim), or
- Tell staff how often certain kinds of expenses can be claimed (five phone credit scratch cards in a week might be too many)
To put these limits in place, simply make an announcement (and then give future reminders) at a staff meeting and post a hand-written notice in the office with the same information. That should be enough to keep things under control for the short term.
However, as always, check with the country program (or regional office, if there is no CP) before implementing these procedures. They may have established value limits and processes that are different from the ones we describe here.