It's not the amount of money that is the issue, the issue is that it this wasn't budgeted into the project when it was proposed 2 years ago. It is software tha

It's not the amount of money that is the issue, the issue is that it this wasn't budgeted into the project when it was proposed 2 years ago. It is software that falls under category S which means you can't use overhead funds it has to be a category S purchase, but you have no category S funds budgeted to the project because you were using free software. Being so cheap actually complicates the matters even more, since the finance people don't really want to mess with purchases less than $5,000, even though it is their own rule that requires all software to go through them regardless of cost. It just means they won't be willing to help very much.