Auditing and Editing a Report
May 16, 2006
Copyright 2006, R. James Holton. All rights reserved.
The Expense Submittal System (ESS) provides several tools
that allow auditors to verify that all required receipts are submitted and to
make corrections to reports that have been wrongly encoded.
Audit Section
The “Audit” section of the Audit Module contains the tools
that you will use to audit a report and approve it for payment. There are three options:
- Edit
and Audit – This is the work horse.
This option displays a queue that contains reports that have been
approved by managers for payment.
You will use this option to access reports to check receipts,
review against policy, and approve for payment.
- Fast
Track – This queue shows reports that do not require any
documentation. These reports can be
audited against policy and approved for payment with out waiting for
receipts. Often this type of report
can be created, approved and paid in a single day.
- Report
Selection – Use this option to quickly locate a report for editing or
review.
The Audit Queue
The audit queue contains reports that have been approved and
are ready to be checked by expense report auditors so they can be paid. The
actual reports that show up in this queue are controlled be a SQL statement in
the reporttable
element of the system.xml
file. Consult the “Professional Services
Manual” for more information. The
default will show all reports that in “Approval Complete” status.
Reports can be audited individually with the “Select” link,
or, can be audited in batch by checking the reports that you want to included,
entering your password, and clicking on the “Checked reports…” button. Batched reports will immediately have their
status changed to “Audited” in the default system.
Report Display
The report display the auditor uses is very similar to the
report display used by reporters to check their work and by managers to approve
reports. There are, however, four
important differences. They are:
- Edit
links – The “edit” link is found next to all receipts, expense purposes, expense
lines, and the report header. This
link will call up the entry for editing.
- Delete
links – The “del” link, which
is found next to all receipts, expense lines, and delete-able purposes, will
delete the associated receipt or purpose from the report.
- “Add …”
links – Allows the addition of the specified item to the report.
- Receipt
check boxes – Appears next to each receipt in the “Receipts Section” under
the “OK” column. A check in this
box indicates that you have verified the physical receipt or document for
this items and that it is OK. ESS
indicates which receipt is required by placing the word “Required” in the
“Receipt Req.” column on the right of each receipt.
- Auditor
sign-off box – This box is towards the bottom of the report display and is
similar to the screen used for managerial approval of the report. In the default set up, auditors approve
reports for approval with this box by entering their password en lieu of
their signature. The system can also
be setup to not require signatures and reports can also be approved in
batch. When auditors sign-off on a
report, they can take one of three actions:
- Accept
– Auditors can approve a report for payment. As part of this process, checked
receipts are saved and an email message, typed into the “Message” box, to reporter
is optional.
- Reject
– A report can be denied approval and returned to the reporter. An email message back to the reporter
is required. The auditor types the
required message into the “Message” box.
Check receipts are saved.
- Confirm
Reciepts – The report is neither accepted for
payment nor receipted, however the checked receipt information is
saved. Normally a message, typed
into the “Message” box, will sent to the reporter explaining why the
report is not ready for payment.
Receipt edit screen
The receipt edit screen is broken into three parts:
- The
top of the screen contains information on the receipt.
- The
middle of the screen contains the expense list which is a break-down of
the expense types this receipt is comprised of. While many receipts are expense against
one expense type, several receipt types are typically broken down across
expense types. An example is a hotel bill with room charges, meals, and
taxes being paid on one receipt.
Another example is a receipt that will be shared across
departments, projects or clients.
- The
bottom of the screen contains a section to edit an individual expense.
This screen is extremely flexible. It allows a single receipt to be broken down into
any number of expenses. To edit the
expense on this screen follow on of these steps:
- To
edit an existing expense, double-click on the item in the expense
list. The bottom of the screen will
be populated. When done editing the
expense, click on the “Update Expense List” button. When you are finished with the receipt,
click the “Update Report with this Receipt” link.
- To
remove an expense from the list, highlight the expense in the list and
then click the “Remove” button.
When you are finished with the receipt, click the “Update Report
with this Receipt” link.
- To
add a new expense line to a receipt, click on the “New” button and file in
the expense information at the bottom of the screen. When done adding the
expense, click on the “Update Expense List” button. When you are finished with the receipt,
click the “Update Report with this Receipt” link.
Don’t forget, there are two update buttons on the screen
which update information. One updates the expense information to the expense
list for the receipt and the other button saves all changes and updates the
report with the receipt and expense information. The “Update Expense List” will
update information from the individual expense entry to the “Expense
List.” The “Update Report with this
Receipt” updates the receipt and expense entries in the central database. Unlike the reporter’s report entry process,
receipts and expenses are updated to the central database immediately.
Guidelines
Each report has a guideline check run against it as it is
being displayed on the audit screen.
Researching Old Reports
ESS offers several ways to located old reports for
display. They are:
- Report
Selection – This option is found in both the “Audit” section and the
“Research” section of the audit module.
It allows you to search for any report based on one or more of the
following criteria:
- Report
status
- Personnel
number
- Previous
reference number
- Central
reference number
- Create
date range
In addition, reports can be orders
by:
a.
Central reference number
b.
Create date
c.
Reverse create date
d.
Report status
e.
Personnel number
f.
Previous reference number
Reports that are editable can be
edited by auditors from the resulting list.
In addition, auditors may approve reports as manager proxies from this
list.
- Simple
Inquiries – This option provides a way to run reports against the expense
database. Consult the “Simple Inquiries Explained” document in the
“Professional Services Manual” for information.
- SQL
Selection – This option lets an auditor create a SQL statement against the
expense database. If you know SQL,
and we admit it takes some training, you can extract lots of ad hoc
information from the database whenever you want it.
###