If you're the person who orders both the components the engineers need and the stuff the office needs, this checklist is for you. I'm the office administrator for a 42-person engineering services company. I manage about $150,000 in annual purchasing across eight vendors, and I report to both operations and finance. When I took over purchasing in 2020, I thought the job was about finding the lowest price. It isn't. It's about getting the small details right before you hit “order.”
This is the checklist I actually use. There are five steps. I didn't build it from theory—I built it by buying the wrong Samtec connector once, almost paying for an office blood pressure monitor without the right documentation, and spending a lunch hour trying to figure out how to reset a cordless phone.
1. Start with the exact part number, not the product name
For electronics, the product name is just the beginning. Samtec HSEC8 is a high-speed edge card socket. Samtec TSM is a precision terminal strip header. Both are Samtec, but they're not interchangeable just because they look like they're in the same general category.
Everything I'd read about buying parts said to “just use the part number from the BOM.” In practice, even a correct part number can have options—plating, lead length, alignment pins, packaging—that change what arrives. If an engineer hands me “Samtec TSM” and nothing else, I ask for the full part number. That's not me being difficult. It's me not ordering a $600 part that turns out to be $1,200 with the right options.
2. Get the all-in price in writing
Once the part number is locked, the pricing conversation should be just as locked. The total cost of ownership includes the base product price, setup fees, shipping, rush fees, and potential rework. The lowest quoted price often isn't the lowest total cost. When I say all-in, I mean unit price, packaging, shipping, handling, and any tooling or setup fees. If a quote says “shipping calculated later,” that's a red flag.
Here's something vendors won't tell you: the first quote is almost never the final price for ongoing relationships. There's usually room to negotiate once you've proven you're a reliable customer. But the total should be transparent from the start. I've learned to ask “what's NOT included” before “what's the price.” The vendor who lists all fees upfront—even if the total looks higher—usually costs less in the end.
Most buyers focus on per-unit pricing and completely miss setup fees, revision costs, and shipping that can add 30-50% to the total. The question everyone asks is “what's your best price?” The question they should ask is “what's included in that price?”
On a recent Samtec order, the difference between the base quote and the all-in total was 18%. Not because the supplier was hiding anything—shipping and handling just weren't in the first document. Not ideal, but workable. Now I require one number.
3. Confirm the reset and return process before you need it
This is the step most people skip. For anything you'll have to support, find out how to reset it, return it, or replace it before it goes into storage. It sounds obvious, but I've learned the hard way that it isn't.
We keep a cordless phone in the conference room. One morning it wouldn't register to the base station. I typed “how to reset cordless phone” into the search bar and got three different sets of instructions, each for a different model. The manual was gone. The phone was down for a day.
Now I ask three things when a product arrives:
- Where is the manual or quick-start guide?
- What is the reset/recovery procedure for the exact model?
- What is the return/replacement policy if the part is wrong?
For components, this matters just as much. If you order the wrong Samtec TSM, what's the return window? Is there a restocking fee? Do you need a return authorization before you ship it back? These questions are less exciting than the lead time, but they're the ones that decide whether you eat the cost.
4. Verify the paperwork before you pay the invoice
For a connector, the datasheet is part of the deliverable. If you can't find an official datasheet for the exact part number, stop. For an office device, the same logic applies.
When we bought the Platinum BP5450 for the office wellness room, I almost paid the invoice without confirming the manual and the warranty information were included. They were, but the vendor's quote didn't say so. When I asked, they said “that's included.” Good, but I shouldn't have had to ask.
What most people don't realize is that documentation becomes an afterthought after the sale is made. If a blood pressure monitor is going to be used by multiple people, you want the instructions and warranty information in the package, not as a PDF you have to request. “Standard” doesn't mean “you'll get it automatically.”
5. Keep one known-good sample as a reference
After a few orders, I started keeping one sample of each item in a labeled drawer. One Samtec HSEC8. One Samtec TSM. The cordless phone manual. The monitor's box with the model number visible. It's not a warehouse—it's a reference shelf.
This is the step people ignore because it feels unnecessary. Memory is bad at model numbers. Supplier reorder screens are usually right, but not always. A physical sample ends arguments.
One time a supplier sent a substitution that was supposedly “equivalent.” The engineer caught it because the pin length didn't match the sample. If we hadn't kept it, we would have assembled a batch of boards with the wrong component. Not fancy. Useful.
Watch out for these three things
Three things that still get me if I rush:
- “Based on specs provided.” If the quote doesn't include the full part number, ask for it. A quote without a part number is not a quote.
- “Free shipping” that appears after the unit price went up. Free shipping is fine if it's in the total; it's not a discount if you're paying for it inside the line item.
- “Standard product” assumptions. Standard doesn't mean universal. The TSM you used last time may have had a different lead length than the TSM in the new drawing. Verify.
The bottom line is transparency. Not just about price, but about what's included, what happens if something goes wrong, and what you can rely on after the package arrives. The supplier who answers those questions before the order is the one I re-order from.