Comptroller of Public Accounts
An Audit Report on the Comptroller of Public Accounts' Post-Payment Review of Vouchers
December 1996
Report Number 97-026
Overall Conclusion
The Comptroller of Public Accounts' current, revised system for the post-payment
audit of vouchers is too new for us to fully evaluate its effectiveness.
The processes we were able to review were effective overall, but could be
enhanced. We reviewed the processes for selecting agencies and vouchers to
audit, audit methodology, and procedures for addressing problems discovered
as a result of the post-payment audits. At the time of our fieldwork, several
of the post-payment audits conducted under the current system were under
review and the reports for these audits had not been issued. Therefore, we
could not review adherence to prescribed audit methodology and the process for
reporting audit results.
Key Facts and Findings
The Comptroller's Office should enhance its procedures for addressing problems
discovered in post-payment audits. Guidelines and procedures for imposing the
more severe sanctions on agencies for invalid payments should be made more
comprehensive. Also, the Comptroller's Office should develop a process for
the timely follow-up of overpayments and noncompliance found in post-payment
audits.
Documentation of the risk assessment used to choose agencies to audit is
incomplete. The overall risk assessed for each agency is calculated from
numerical ratings assigned for five risk factors. The Comptroller has not
documented the thought process used to rate agencies on the three risk
factors that require judgement and analysis to assess risk.
Contact the SAO about this report.
Download the PDF version of this report. (.pdf)
HTML Equivalent (utilizing Adobe's PDF Conversion by Simple Form).