That money is allocated to six main areas: faculty and staff salaries, benefits, other compensation, cost of goods sold, supplies and equipment and transfers to the general fund and capital budget and debt service.

Most of the expenditures are related to personnel spending, said Jonas Cook, Financial Services and Reporting associate vice president. About 60 percent of the daily budget is spent on salaries, benefits and other compensation.

Salaries make up about $122,000 of daily expenditures. Benefits total $326,000, while about $32,000 is spent on compensation.

About $245,000 is spent daily on supplies and equipment. Funding for costs of goods sold is about $34,000, while the total amount of transfers adds up to about $41,000.

Cook said the university does not consistently spend $800,000 each day of the year, but the amount fluctuates from day to day.

“Basically on average, that’s what it would specifically be,” he said. “Some days you may make a $2 million to $3 million payment on debt.”

Cook said the university makes payment on its debt semiannually.

“The higher days are going to be the days you actually have payments in payroll, though,” he said.

During the 1998-99 academic year, CMU spent an average of about $580,000 daily. That figure has increased by $220,000 in five years time — a 28 percent increase.

Cook said spending has increased because budgets have increased, but CMU spends its money wisely.

“I think this university, with the budget reductions it has experienced, that it does a darn good job,” he said.

Cook said it’s hard to compare CMU’s daily expenditures to other universities.

“It depends on the size of the institution,” he said. “The University of Michigan is going to spend more because of the size of their payrolls and size of the institution.”

Payable Accounting Coordinator Bonnie Samsel said spending has changed at CMU since a new policy was implemented Aug. 1.

“There was a service reduction that impacted the purchasing department as well as payables, so all the quick purchase orders were eliminated,” she said.

Many supplies and equipment less than $1,000 are now purchased using departmental purchasing cards called procurement cards, Samsel said.

She said Payable Accounting has received fewer checks this year, but with the number of big projects going on, spending is still up.

“I can’t say I’ve noticed a lot of blatantly careless spending,” Samsel said. “A lot of what we see through our office is for supplies, equipment and conferences.”

Carol Haas, director of Budget and Planning, said there isn’t much careless spending in CMU’s budget, which was cut $14.3 million this year.

“When you look at the whole picture, that number could have increased a lot more, but because we’ve made attempts to curb that spending, it hasn’t,” she said. “I would say that CMU is quite efficient, and we have really done a lot of work in trying to reduce our expenses.”

Haas said CMU has made a number of cooperative purchasing agreements with area schools to reduce spending. Attempts also have been made to reduce costs of health benefits and utilities, she said.

“We have alternative fuel sources, so we can manage the resources to our benefit,” she said. “When gas prices are high, we can run wood. When it’s a benefit to run electricity instead of gas, we can do that. Overall, CMU does do a really good job in curbing these expenses.”