The negotiations continue...

If there was ever a chance that I'd buy that car it's gone now... ;-)


BTH

 

The pointy haired ones have seen fit to drop our usenet news feed
until further notice[1]. Reading through google sucks (plus I miss
half of Clems posts) and we're firewalled to the eyeballs so I cant
get out and use a public news server either :-(

Ash.
[1] So I guess its lucky that you kept my mobile number[2]
[2] Although as you can see, I did read this eventually ;-)

 

Yeah, we remember... He wasn't a public servant.

Gary

 

sharkey said....

sh> It's one of those situations where the perversity of the financial
sh> administration gets multiplied by the perversity of the tex dept.

Heard a beauty today. Here at work we have $20k in the budget for
maintenance on some specific plant. However, we wanted to transfer that
dough into the capital expenditure budget to replace the gear that the
money would otherwise be spent on fixing.

Can't do it, say the bean counters. That dough is taxed differently,
they tell us....

Ps. Will be up at Tintaldra, Fri Feb 20, if you want me to return that
shout....

 

Indeed, but the fallout landed on us too.


BTH

 

Is true. The expense expenditure gets written of in one year, the capex over 3-5
(or even longer in some cases - as much as 25....)

Big difference in the tax effect of 20K this year vs 1/25th of 20K.....

JL
(of course it's still a dumb answer, correct, but dumb)

 

In aus.motorcycles on Mon, 19 Jan 2004 22:25:14 +1100

Hence the common practice of buying lots of "spare parts".

We used to get quotes from companies for PCs in bits, then they were
shipped in "space saving" form. You know, all the bits in this metal
box with connectors on the side.

That was the public service, so it wasn't cos of tax, but the theory's
the same.

At least we didn't have to do the famous "photocopier down the
stairwell" trick.

Zebee

 

Er, do tell.

G

 

In aus.motorcycles on 20 Jan 2004 08:13:39 +1100

Probable urban legend about a public service section who had a vry old
and wonky photocopier. They were told they could maintain it but not
get a new one.

So it was thrown down the fire escape and the purchasing dept told "now
maintain that you bastards".

Zebee

 

heh.

One of my colleagues managed to get around a "$500 per item" limit by
having a Macintosh (back in the days when they were just a single box)
invoiced as five separate items. Screen, IO Unit, Hard drive,
Motherboard and software.

Moike

 

There's a case study in one of my textbooks about a
company somewhere in Europe who managed to build an
entire factory inside of a $20,000 per order authorisation
limit.

They only got caught out when they submitted a purchase
request to head office for a chimney. They couldn't
figure out a way to get a chimney itemised at less than
$20K.

Bob

 

In some financial environments, if a thing can be maintained, it
cannot be replaced. Even if it's a horrible old piece of shit.
Even if it spends more time dead than alive. Even they're
practically giving new ones away in cornflakes boxes and this one
costs $10,000 a month just in support contract fees (parts extra).

So sometimes a Kinetic Catastrophic Utter Failure occurs.

-----sharks

 

When you really, really need a new photocopier because no amount of
repairs are fixing it, move it to the next floor down by the
stairwell, unattended.

I've witnessed it done, in a Government Dept. Copier didn't quite make
the corner at the first landing.

Theo

 

"Smiling Bob" wrote

The most expensive item I ever bought on a $500 authority was $5800.

Theo

 

The best one I know of was a section at Padstow TAFE that wanted to buy a
dishwasher for the teachers lunch room, "no, we cant approve the purchase of
a dishwasher", so they ordered a Hydraulic flushing machine, Part no #####.

True story.

Now the section I work in would never do anything dodgy like that.

Al

 

Geez, that's a lot of paperwork. What, 12 purchase orders?

Bob

 

"Smiling Bob" wrote

Yup. I really needed the item and all the District Managers and above
were at their annual piss-up, err.. strategy meeting. As a result
there was no-one up the chain of command (in a $200M a year company)
available to make the decision. The funny part was that at that time I
had a $500 authority but I could exercise that as many times a day as
I wanted. Now I make decisions up to our credit limit any time I want.
I spent $70K yesterday but it was all paying bills and that wonderful
monthly 'cheer me up', the BAS Statement.

We just bought a 'seconds' Samsung 40" LCD monitor for $3850 ex. It is
new but has a few dead pixels. A new one is $9900 ex.

Theo

 

20 odd years ago working in private enterprise, I asked whether it
would be possible to buy two el cheapo walkie talkies to allow two
cameraman to communicate from one side of a racetrack to another. The
cameras weren't attached to OB van or anything and it wasn't a huge
job, but it would have just made the weekly job easier if something
went wrong instead of having to traipse the kilometre around to the
other side.

Engineering thought that was a great idea and said they'd look into
it.

Later I was told no, because the budget wouldn't allow it. But total
cost would have been about $50! "Yeah - but if we are going to get
something like that it would need to be up to our specs, and those
ones aren't. They'd actually cost $2000 and we can't afford that".

So we got nothing ...

Cheers



-------------
Kevin Gleeson
Technical Director
Blue Rocket Productions
Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
www.blue-rocket.com.au

 

I remember one year we had no cash in the office machines (capital item
entry), but plenty in the postage (recurrent cost item entry), so we
bought a new franking machine out of the postage allocation. The bloody
accountant kept moaning about how he hoped audit wouldn't find out ...
and guess what! (Stupid prick!!)

Cheers
Goaty

 

When Coles opened, their slogan was "nothing over 2/6". At one time they
were selling pyjama tops and bottoms seperately - might have cost you
5/- for a full set of pjs, but it was still "nothing over 2/6"!!

Cheers
Goaty