_posts/2015-08-06-communicart-tool-will-streamline-purchase-card-process.md
---
title: "Communicart tool will streamline purchase card process"
date: 2015-08-06
layout: post
authors:
- boone
tags:
- platforms
- c2
- procurement
excerpt: "Our hope is that our new Communicart tool will streamline the purchase card approval process so government employees can spend more time performing their essential work and less time on the paperwork required to buy a new chair."
description: "Our hope is that our new Communicart tool will streamline the purchase card approval process so government employees can spend more time performing their essential work and less time on the paperwork required to buy a new chair."
image: /assets/blog/communicart/communicart-screenshot.png
---
We’ve all been there. You walk into a meeting, set your things on the
table, and sit down on the chair only to hit the floor instead. In a
corporate office you might buy a new chair and get reimbursed, or maybe
your company has a process for requesting new furniture. Regardless,
that chair needs replacing.
In the government, the system to replace something small like an office
chair revolves around credit cards, called “purchase cards,” paid by the
government and used by specially trained employees. In 2014, about
265,000 federal employees held purchase cards. They made [more than 20
million transactions totaling more than $17 billion dollars][1] for items [that cost less than $3,000][2]. Regulations require
that these “micro-purchases” be reviewed to ensure federal employees are
properly spending taxpayer money.
To buy that new office chair, a federal employee needs to justify the
purchase to an approving official and have a budget analyst ensure funds
are available. All of that work is supposed to happen fast for
micro-purchases — it’s hard to get work done without a chair — but until
recently there were no standard tools the employee, the approver, or the
analyst could use to manage and track these requests. Most of that work
is done over email, which, while electronic, places the burden of
tracking on the employee. If you need a chair, it’s on you to figure out
how to keep track of your request through this process. Over time these
inconsistencies became inefficiencies that slowed down the whole
process. With our partners at the General Service Administration's
Public Buildings Service in Washington, D.C., we’ve started building a
tool to help make this process fast and efficient.
[](https://cap.18f.gov/)
We call it [Communicart](https://18f.gsa.gov/what-we-deliver/c2/).
It’s a tool that took some cues from the process for tracking “carts”
through an approval process on [GSA Advantage][3], a site government
employees use to shop at special rates. Our hope is that as this tool
streamlines the purchase card approval process, government employees can
spend more time performing their essential work and less time on the
paperwork required to buy that new chair. An updated process will also
help restore public confidence that government employees are only using
cards for valid purchases. We’re excited to begin rolling it out to
Public Buildings Service employees across the country.
We [built Communicart in the open][4] and listened carefully to our
users throughout the process. We’ve heard people say things like “this
system is awesome,” and even got asked “when do the angels sing?” We’re
excited to see how this product grows.
In the past, building a system like this would take months or even years
to build a list of technical requirements, put it out for bidding, then
wait for a finished product. By working in an agile fashion with 18F, in
just a few weeks, GSA had the initial concept built and was able to get
immediate feedback from the people who would actually be using this
tool. Early feedback helped drive Communicart’s development, and saved
time and taxpayer dollars by catching problems while they were small and
easy to mitigate
Below is a visualization of our team’s development work, as displayed by
tracking their code in GitHub. If you’re interested in the code you can
learn more in the project’s [GitHub repository][4]. To learn more about
Communicart, check out our [Dashboard][5] where we have information on
the code behind the project, review the [slides from our first demo
day][6] showing off an early prototype, and check out [the Communicart
product page][7].
{{ "https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/QDTJZwjR24A" | embed: "Visualization of our team's development work" }}
We’ll be blogging more about Communicart, how we built it, and who is
using it in the next few weeks. We have all the beta testers we can
handle right now, but if you’re interested in getting involved in the
future, [drop us a line](mailto:gatewaycommunicator@gsa.gov).
*Correction:* An earlier version of this post stated that Communicart's national rollout would begin in the General Services Administration's Great Lakes Region (Region 5). The National Capital Region (Region 11) launched Communicart in early July.
[1]: https://smartpay.gsa.gov/about-gsa-smartpay/program-statistics
[2]: https://smartpay.gsa.gov/program-coordinators/smartpay-charge-cards/purchase-card/how-it-works
[3]: https://www.gsaadvantage.gov/advantage/main/start\_page.do
[4]: https://github.com/18f/C2
[5]: https://18f.gsa.gov/what-we-deliver/c2/
[6]: https://speakerdeck.com/18f/cap-communicart-18f-demo-day-9-may-2014
[7]: https://cap.18f.gov/