Stake audit 90 day action items

[mikethompson]

Stake auditor here. When auditing the stake there are action items on the financial report that are over 90 days old. These are uncashed checks from wards within the stake, not checks issued by the stake. The wards are the units that have failed to follow up, not the stake.

My question: Since this shows up on the stake's action items I believe the question in item 17 (have items older than 90 days been cleared) should be marked "No" even though the stake was not initially responsible for the expense. The same thing should happen in the wards that failed to clear these.

Im interested in anyone's opinion on this issue. Should the question be marked Yes or No?

[jdlessley]

Have you talked about this with your audit committee chairman? If he does not have a clear answer he can speak with the area auditor.

[eblood66]

Even though those items show up as action items on the stake financial report, they don't show up as Action Items on the Stake dashboard in LCR. I also don't see the point in recording 2 exceptions for the same thing. The fact that it hasn't been resolved really doesn't mean the stake (and stake clerk) aren't doing their job. They may have been following up with the ward asking them to deal with action item but they have no ability to make it happen. I suppose you could ask what the stake has done to try to get the ward to deal with the action item and if they haven't done anything then maybe an exception is warranted. But the audit question doesn't really ask you to do that so it could be going beyond the mark.

Of course, as a stake finance clerk I may be biased .

But ultimately what jdlessley said is the best course for you decide what to do in your stake.

[waltbristow]

The question is asking about action items belonging to the stake. It IS hard to identify stake action items but they sometimes do happen. In my experience action items show up in 3 situations: uncashed checks, balances in a missionary account for missionaries who are no longer serving, and deposits that show up in LCR but don't show up in bank records. Stakes don't typically write as many checks as wards. I've never seen a stake missionary account. Stakes make few deposits.

In my 12 years as an assistant area auditor, I've seen action items on a stake audit maybe a couple times.

At least that's my understanding and it's how I've handled the audit question when I review stake audits. If I'm wrong, please let me know.

[mikethompson]

Thanks for the feedback. I've been an auditor for 10 years and haven't seen this before. It shows up under action items in the Stake financial report, but the action can only be taken by the ward.

Of course the stake can prompt them to do it, but can't actually do the work. Because of this, and because it will likely be flagged in the ward audits, I will approach this as not being a finding on the Stake audit. Audits are an opportunity to train and help units improve and in this case there isn't any improvement required.

I'll discuss this with the audit committee as well.

Thanks to everyone for your input.