The Secret To Saving Money On Maintenance Supplies

Spending  $20 for a toggle bolt?   Apartment Managers can become obsessive about saving money on maintenance supplies.  Sometimes the efforts to justify pricing from supplier A over supplier B have grown to simply outweigh the savings that might have been achieved.  When you evaluate the savings, you need to include the hours of surfing and shopping.  Only to find that mystery supplier that saved you 5%.
Managers are very protective of their budgets.  They work diligently to stretch their budgets to cover the full 30 days of our operating month.  But there are some expenses that are sneaking their way into our  expense management that have a much deeper impact than we might realize.

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How often is your team purchasing supplies from a local provider instead of purchasing through an account that delivers the supplies?
While there are benefits to supporting local businesses, but here are a few points that should be  considered.
National Discounts
First the local store does not offer your community the discounts in pricing that are negotiated through national contracts.  Occasionally, there is usually a compelling reason for that quick trip.  We need one little part to finish a repair, or there’s an emergency leak that needs a special supply line or fitting.  Its easy to justify this expense. This represents a situation that is an exception not the predominant source of maintenance supplies.
Time and Mileage

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Most importantly, the cost of this item, is not the co……