Here we go again with the reimbursements...and this time it's big money. As you all know, I'm a very active member of several groups at my university, one in particular of which is going to be hosting a conference for our department at the end of this week. All of the officers of the club have decided to split up the responsibilities for the conference, including scheduling the venue, coordinating with all the presenters, preparing the room, and making sure the refreshments are plenty and delicious. I decided to bite the bullet, and I volunteered to be "the refreshment guy". I didn't realize what exactly that entailed until I started planning things out today. I had to call several different places to order food for both the morning and afternoon sessions of the conference. I never realized how expensive things could get when ordering for large groups of people until I calling around to get some comparison prices. I ended up deciding on ordering about seven dozen bagels and ten tubs of cream cheese in order to keep everyone satisfied during the morning session. Then, I figured that we would have just some cookies and vegetables to snack on throughout the afternoon sessions, since people were going to have about ninety minutes to get lunch in between the early and late sessions. I then remembered that I was going to have to figure out what to do about paper products, drinks, and all the little extras like stirrers, sugar, and cream for the coffee. Luckily, the club already had quite a bunch of paper product things from past events, so it was just a matter of heading over to our office to figure out what we did and didn't have available. Once I had everything inventoried, I headed off to the store to buy what I needed. I was slightly appalled as the cash register beeped and beeped and landing around the eighty dollar mark for the groceries that I needed...including all the vegetables that I was going to later chop up for the vegetable tray. I added that up in my head along with the sixty-five dollars that I was going to be charged for the bagels and the thirty dollars for the two cookie trays...not to mention the ice that I was going to buy on the day of the conference. My quick mental math told me that it was going to end up being somewhere around one hundred and seventy-five dollars...give or take a few dollars. Normally, I wouldn't care much about how much it was going to be, but this time it was different. As it goes with our university, we can't get money in advance for what we need for any of our functions. Instead, we need to pay for things up front, and then submit our receipts for reimbursement from the club financial services office. That means that I was going to have to put that nearly two hundred dollars of my own money up front and then wait for our treasurer to submit my receipts and then wait for the financial services office to approve the amount and mail out my check. Long story short...it's going to end up being about two weeks before I get reimbursed for the money that I'm spending. If it was a different time in the semester, I probably wouldn't even think twice about this dilemma, but since it is coming down to the end of the semester, two hundred dollars is quite a bit. It's also a little irritating to me that no one else in the club volunteered to share the burden of spending this money out of pocket with me...but I'm not exactly one to complain about such things very loudly. I suppose that I just wish that there was another way to go about the whole situation. If only our faculty advisor could approve a particular set amount of money to budget for the events, and then we could get that money out in advance to have to buy supplies and whatever else we need. Then, the left over money could be left in the petty cash box or be redeposited into our account once the event is all over. Sadly, I'm sure that this will be the exact way that things will continue...but I'll know better than to take the whole responsibility of spending money on to my shoulders the next time. I personally think that the treasurer should be actively involved, since that will give him or her a kick in the pants to make sure to get the reimbursement receipts submitted and get the process moving.