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:

 

  1. 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.
  2. 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. 
  3. 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:

 

  1. The top of the screen contains information on the receipt.
  2. 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.
  3. 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:

 

  1. 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:
    1. Report status
    2. Personnel number
    3. Previous reference number
    4. Central reference number
    5. 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.

 

  1. 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.
  2. 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.

 

###