USAS Accounting and Payment Control

Overview

Applicable to

State agencies and institutions of higher education.

Policy

To reduce risks to state funds, agencies should have controls over expenditure processing that segregate each accounting task to the greatest extent practical. Ideally, no individual should be able to enter or alter and then release payments or other accounting transactions within the statewide financial systems without another person’s involvement.

Two tools are available for agencies to use to strengthen internal controls:

• Agencies may request that a preventative control be enforced for all their transactions in USAS. If an agency requests the control, an edit will prevent the release of a document that the same user entered or altered, or warn when this is about to occur.
• The Risky Document Report (DAFR9840) identifies documents that the same user entered or altered and then released for processing. This report enables agency management or internal and external auditors to easily identify these documents.

Preventative Control: Edit for Document Tracking Control

Agencies may elect to have the document tracking control edit on the Agency Profile (D02) set to either:

• Prevent a user from releasing a batch that the same user entered or altered for the agency.
  – or –
• Warn the user when the same user attempts to release his or her own entries or changes.

The document tracking control edit triggers a message on the Batch Balancing (502) screen:

• If the agency chooses to prevent the user who entered or changed a batch from releasing a batch, USAS displays the message: Different User Must Release Batch. The batch is not released.
• If the agency chooses to warn when the user who entered or changed a batch is releasing a batch, USAS displays the message: Same Person Should Not Enter/Change a Transaction Then Release. Press Enter to Continue. The batch is then released.
• If the agency selects neither option, then USAS functions as usual without additional warnings or controls.

To invoke this edit, agencies must request an update to Position 18 of the Data-Related Errors section of the D02 profile by emailing their appropriation control officer. Requests should include the preferred edit option: Blank (Fatal), W (Warning) or I (Ignore).

These edits cannot be used with system-generated/alpha batch types, but can be used with these batch types:

• 1 – Budgetary
• 2 – Revenue
• 3 – Encumbrance
• 4 – Expenditures
• 5 – Journal Vouchers
• 6 – Payroll
• 7 – Torts
• 8 – Journal Voucher Balancing

The edit is triggered when a user who entered or altered any transaction in the batch tries to release a batch. Re-computing a batch or scrolling through a batch in change or in view mode does not trigger the edit. Oversight staff cannot override the edit.

This control was implemented with Application Change Request (ACR) 23765.

Detective Control: Risky Document Report (DAFR9840)

Agencies may request the DAFR9840 on the Report Request Profile (91) screen for a list of documents that were entered or altered by the same user who released the batch.

The DAFR9840 identifies and analyzes documents with these action codes:

• 200 – Transaction Added to Accounting Files
• 205 – Transaction on Accounting Files Changed
• 210 – Transaction Deleted from Accounting File
• 201 – Release of Batch

Only documents that have a combination of 201 and either 200, 205 or 210 action codes with the same user ID are shown on the report.

The DAFR9840 has two special selects. Special Select 1 is for date range(s). Agencies may request the report for a single date or for a range of dates. The report is limited to the current and prior fiscal year.

Special Select 2 is for document type. The default value (blank) for Special Select 2 displays all documents within the date range designated by Special Select 1.

Users may also restrict the type of documents displayed to payment documents only (Special Select 2 = PYMT) or to non-payment documents only (Special Select 2 = NPMT).

This control was implemented with ACR 23766.