The months of May and June typically elicit good feelings on college campuses. Incoming freshmen start to plan their trips for orientation and campus visiting. College students return to families after finals week ends, that is, if they aren’t sticking around for summer classes. And for the seniors, it’s a bittersweet time in their lives that they’ll never forget.
If you ask procurement departments what they think about this time of year, you may get a different answer. That’s because it tends to be the end of the fiscal year (typically June 30 is when the fiscal year ends) in higher education. Most commonly, fiscal years in higher education operate from July 1st to June 30th. It’s not a hard and fast rule though, and may vary by institution. Whenever your fiscal year begins and ends, you likely know that it can be a stressful time of the year for finance departments. Employees often take on an increased workload as they make sure that all of the necessary purchases are made before the fiscal year ends. It’s part of a phenomenon commonly called “use it or lose it”.
Use it or lose it
Procurement departments are not immune to the “use it or lose it” policy that most organizational departments are held to. Unspent money does not roll over into the new year. Meaning, if the budget isn’t used up by the end of the fiscal year, it gives the impression that the department “didn’t need it”, forfeiting the funds back into the central budget and causing budget cuts for the department into the next fiscal year.
This much is well-known, but there are additional considerations that apply in some cases. For example, in education, institutions receive grants that may come with conditions that specify that all of the money must be spent within a specified timeframe, and in a specified way.
Uncertainty with tariffs
In 2025, the United States introduced increased tariffs on goods imported into the country. The largest way this has affected the supply chain is that it has introduced uncertainty. Higher education is not spared from this uncertainty, and are feeling the effects of it too.
This just introduces another ripple in how the end of this fiscal year may be a difficult one. While this is a volatile situation, you can introduce strategies to make your organization more adaptable as the situation changes and evolves.
Different priorities at different levels of decision-making
While the department as a whole is primarily focused on meeting deadlines and assuring that all of the fiscal year spend is accounted for, finance leaders are busy budgeting and making decisions based on data coming in from the now-ending fiscal year. As the department finalizes purchase orders, reconciles expenses, and handles the allocations of remaining funds, finance leaders oversee this entire process and plan for next year.
Of course, this depends on the quality, and completeness of data gathered over the course of the fiscal year. To address this, higher education institutions could consider expense monitoring services, like Card Integrity’s DataWISE, that provide 100% review of P-Card transactions. Card Integrity uses advanced analytics and professional expertise to identify potential fraud and provide benchmarking and reporting to finance leaders at institutions of higher education large and small, public and private.
The new fiscal year often means new strategies, technologies, and integrations
The procurement department is also beholden to funds and budgeting considerations. Thankfully, Card Integrity is also very affordable. That means that the end of the fiscal year may line up as a time to bring in additional services to help procurement departments be set up for success in the next year. If you’re considering outsourcing to help with common challenges in higher education like short staffing and budget limitations, check out our resource page below to view case studies and success stories in higher education and beyond — including for clients like Iowa State University, Kentucky Community and Technical College System, North Carolina State University, the University of Louisville and many more!
