Jan to June financial audit

Discuss questions around local unit policies for budgeting, reconciling, etc. This forum should not contain specific financial or membership information.
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aebrown
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Re: Jan to June financial audit

#11

Post by aebrown »

jduckett wrote:By the wording of the question, it makes me think I should only accept expense requests from the Bishop, or even take it to the level where a signature is required on our reimbursement forms before I print and sign the check.
You need to take counsel from your stake presidency and bishopric on their interpretation of this question.

The exact wording of question 8 is: "Did the bishop approve all expenditures before payments were made? Approvals may be verbal (Evidence of written authorization will be tested later in the audit.)
If any payment was made before the bishop approved the expenditure, mark “No.”"

I guess the question you're struggling with is what does it mean for payments to be "made." Personally, I don't think that cutting a check is making a payment in any sense of the word. Payment is only made when the payment is somehow delivered to the payee. If you write a check, then void it instead of delivering it, did you "make a payment"? Clearly not. So the writing of the check cannot be what is meant by this question.

So I am perfectly comfortable with cutting the check before the approval is given. I just won't deliver the check to the payee until it has been approved by the bishop or stake president. And on the subject of verbal approval, I appreciate you care in having a written audit trail, but the audit instructions clearly have one question dealing with approval, which explicitly mentions that verbal approval is acceptable, and another set of questions dealing with written authorization, which clearly have to have a written signature, but which say nothing about having to be done before the payment is made. I see no reason to create an additional audit restriction which is not explicitly in the carefully-worded audit questions.
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