Collections for gifts and presents

Oxfordshire County Council purchasing cards are provided exclusively for school-related purchases and must not be used when you organise a collection to buy a gift for a member of staff. Some schools are depositing collections into petty cash and then using the school purchasing card to buy a gift. 

The correct way to manage this is for the money collected to be given a member of the team, who then uses it to buy the gift - either by spending the cash or by banking the money collected into their own account and using their own personal bank card to purchase the present. 

If you do use purchasing cards to buy gifts from a staff collection, you will be in breach of the purchasing card policy and this will lead to the card being removed. It is essential that personal purchases are kept separate from spending on behalf of your school. 

If you need any more information about the purchasing card policy, please see the information on the schools’ website