County accounting system (MUNIS) purchasing topics Part IV – Analyses

Published November 22, 2021

The focus of this audit work is on purchasing topics for the County accounting system (Tyler Munis).

The new accounting system (Munis) provides extensive access to the information it collects and handles. It provides information from the inquiry screens built into the system (which also allow export to excel for further analyses); numerous levels of reports; and computer access too many of the underlying tables.

The analyses work entails various transactional analyses identified during planning.

What was found:

During the audit, a number of analyses were performed that highlighted some areas for improvement including:

1. Duplicate payments of invoices are a potential risk due to the setup of vendors as well as entry of invoices. The analyses identified only a relatively small number of duplicate invoices.
2. A selective review of purchase orders around three way match indicated some unusual practices.
3. Approvers using bulk approvals may result in ineffective oversight. The analysis developed (to identify situations where more than one item was approved at the same time (same date/time down to the second)) showed this was occurring at a rate of 37% for invoices.
4. Some invoices offer opportunities to use purchase orders and contracts in Munis.
5. Use of accountable plan should be limited to employee payments.

A number of other analyses were performed but did not yield any recommendations.

What was recommended:

Recommendations included:

• establishing unique invoice number guidance;
• developing a search for duplicate invoices;
• providing guidance on use of requisitions and receiving of goods;
• training to approvers;
• identifying routine payments that could be setup with a purchase order or contract; and
• limiting usage of its accountable plan payments to employees.

Recommendation update:

In 2024, Staff were working on a new query to monitor bulk approvals. Despite anticipated recommendation resolution in the summer of 2025, staff turnover prevented development of an automatic report to assess bulk approvals.