COMMON AUDIT ISSUES
Purchase Card Audits (6/02 Update)
Recently we completed our initial round of audits of divisions on campus that are using P-Cards for procurement. This series, along with desk audits done this past winter, identified a campus wide documentation issue for card users. In many of the tested transactions where additional documentation is required when the transaction is submitted to central accounting (Peterson) for payment, such documentation was missing at the department level for P-Card purchases. The cardholder must maintain required documentation with the P-Card source documents. The failure to properly document transactions can lead to revocation of card privileges and potentially jeopardize the entire purchase card program.
To date we have primarily found problems with three types of transactions:
-
Food and refreshments for in city meetings - UWS Policy "Meeting Planning Guide/UW Sponsored Events" (specifically the documentation requirements in Appendix A) should be reviewed before incurring any meeting costs. The most common items missing in our audits have been a complete agenda, list of the participants and an explanation of why food was being provided.
-
Travel - UWS Policy on "Travel" details travel documentation requirements, especially those outlined in the TER preparation section. In the travel expenditures we have audited so far, we have seen little cross checking to TERs filed for reimbursement to avoid duplicate claims. The additional documentation for exceeding room maximums and the absence of the business purpose of the trip has been the information most frequently missing. In some instances neither the name of the traveler(s) nor purpose of the trip was identified with the P-Card receipt.
-
Prizes and Awards - UWS Policy "Prizes, Awards, and Gifts" defines the additional record keeping requirements for these expenditures. As with Food and Travel, the recipients and reason for the awards was not part of the documentation supporting the purchases.
Accounting Services has a companion article on this same subject as it relates to documenting these expenses when submitting them for payment through accounting services.
Business Services News - June 2002