In partnership with the Finance Department, the Service Excellence Program (SEP) has made progress on exciting work to simplify and digitize purchasing at York.  

After extensive consultation with the York community, we heard that purchasing goods and services was a time-consuming process and there was room for improvement. Through measures to simplify and digitize purchasing, we’re increasing usability and overall efficiency while reducing cost, effort and process time. These are considerable impacts that are aligned with our Vision for Service Excellence. 

What’s changed so far 

• The “single quote threshold” under which departments are permitted to determine fair market value will increase from $10,000 to $25,000. 

• Departments will no longer be required to solicit three quotes for payments under $25,000, except for consulting services which require multiple quotes regardless of value. 

For more information, you can view the Procurement Services bulletin here.  

Benefit to the York Community 

Based on benefit analysis, the update to the single quote threshold is expected to reduce the time to purchase goods and services valued between $10,000 and $25,000 by up to four weeks. This results in less time-consuming administrative work and frees staff for more important tasks within their respective departments.  

What's next

To stay up to date about the latest improvements in the SEP’s Finance Stream, join our mailing list.  For any questions or feedback, please reach out to our team.