The Purchasing or Materials Management function within an educational institution plays a very important role. All of the materials necessary to run the day to day operations somehow begin here. In addition to all purchase orders and invoices, there is a tremendous need to store backup material which helped to justify this purchase in the first place. This paperwork must be filed in an effective manner and also filed in a way to make it easy to retrieve.

In addition, due to the normal space crunch on most campuses, the purchasing area is designated as a bulk storage and distribution location.