In my experience it's typically a good idea to keep the bean counters out of things.
Recently buying computing hardware I selected an American provider for my eu based lab. After paying the invoices the bean counters then asked if I could get the money back because they didn't want to pay VAT. I said feel free to ask for the money back yourself I'm happy with the purchase that you already approved. They refused and kept going up the chain until the director said just pay the VAT. after countless emails, meetings, and other time wasting activities, VAT ended up being 8 euros. Bean counters create drama to justify their bean counting.
I'm sure there are good reasons for them. But they are often simply in the way.
Entire industries exist to bypass the bean counters. Arguably much of SaaS just is that.
But you can make a comfortable living as a small VAR by just buying product and charging more to companies for it in the way their bean counters like to see it.
Yep - at a previous job I think there was some expensive tool that would never have been approved, but someone decided to buy it from AWS Marketplace instead where it was just a rounding error in the total monthly AWS spend.
Recently buying computing hardware I selected an American provider for my eu based lab. After paying the invoices the bean counters then asked if I could get the money back because they didn't want to pay VAT. I said feel free to ask for the money back yourself I'm happy with the purchase that you already approved. They refused and kept going up the chain until the director said just pay the VAT. after countless emails, meetings, and other time wasting activities, VAT ended up being 8 euros. Bean counters create drama to justify their bean counting.
I'm sure there are good reasons for them. But they are often simply in the way.