Finance departments are pretty good at creating a GL account for most areas of cost significance. However, one area is tough to nail down – JanSan (Janitorial/Sanitation). Where do you record this?
These products would include supplies like:
- Waste bags
- Floor chemicals
- Hand soap
- Sanitizers
- Toilet tissue
- Napkins
Because normally you won’t find a GL account established for JanSan (you will see it recorded in with other items, or as a Miscellaneous Expense), it’s historically been difficult to identify data, let alone act upon it. However, it’s truly a commodity, and an area ripe for management and savings.
On the other hand, office supplies is an easily identifiable expense and highly managed through just a few available national suppliers/distributors. Those same distributors can also easily deliver your JanSan product as well and if you’re focusing on it, can do so at a much lower price by not only negotiating with the OEM, but also with the distributor. Since they’re making a delivery already for office supplies, why not also have them deliver JanSan product as well? This allows you to meet any minimum order requirements and, if you can negotiate the markup with the distributor as well as the manufacturer’s price, savings can be significant. Not many GPO’s have this program, but we do.
One manufacturer we work with, GOJO, produces hand sanitizers and our office supply partner, Staples, delivers their product to our members. GOJO owns the Purell brand and recently concluded a study that proves that the installation of hand sanitizer dispensers in the work place can reduce employee absenteeism. You can read the article in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine here:
We recently blogged about becoming more strategic as a Procurement team and what can be more strategic than looking into an opportunity to reduce employee absenteeism simply by installing and encouraging the use of hand sanitizers in the office workspace?
In addition, we have negotiated pricing for items with other manufacturers such as Heritage Bag, Diversey and Georgia Pacific, which all impact this difficult to define category called JanSan. Those members who are utilizing Staples to deliver this product as well are seeing significant savings and bringing some much needed focus to a traditionally overlooked indirect area of spend.
