Hello Sandbox Team Treasurer,
In order for MIT to manage the disbursement of funds from the Sandbox Program to the
student teams participating, we will be using the standard Request for Payment (RFP) process.
Once your team has incurred an expense related to the program, please fill out a
Sandbox Expense Report form (see attached form) and forward a copy of the receipts to
[email protected].
The standard MIT rules for purchasing apply to all Sandbox team expenses. Keep in mind
that the following items are not allowed for reimbursement: gifts, alcohol, and items not
directly related to the team project. Allowed expenses include software licenses, hardware,
materials, conference fees, travel fees, market research expenses. Team or personal meals will
not be covered, but expenses incurred (including meals and coffee/tea) to meet with
prospective customers or subjects of market research are allowed. Note that all food
purchases must be connected with meeting an external party, and requests will need to include
a list of attendees and the purpose of the meeting.
MIT cannot reimburse for tax, please inform vendors of MIT’s tax-exempt status and
provide them with a copy of MIT’s tax-exempt forms (you will need both ST-2 and St-5), which
can be found here. It may be necessary to contact vendors when making purchases online to
ensure any tax applied to your order is credited at the time of purchase.
Due to the large volume of purchases likely to occur from Amazon.com, a process has
been established for these purchases and can be found in a separate attachment to this email.
If you are interested in purchasing items through MIT’s eCat system of preferred
vendors, which usually offers discounts and will be automatically tax exempt, please email
[email protected] for further instructions.
In addition, before you send any receipts in for reimbursement, please make sure that
you are set up through Atlas to have payments sent to your bank account. If you have not, you
can find the step-by-step process on Atlas here. It is important that you keep your bank
information current in the MIT system to ensure timely reimbursement.
Best regards,
Jinane Abounadi
Executive Director – MIT Sandbox