Finding Text
2024-2 Segregation of Duties – Child Nutrition, Title I, ESSER
Segregation of Duties
Criteria: The small size of the School District’s office staff limits the extent of separation of duties. The basic premise in an ideal accounting office is that no one employee should have access to both physical assets and the related accounting records or to all phases of a transaction. Some examples of lack of segregation of duties at the School District are as follows:
An individual can process payroll, generate payroll liabilities, generate signed payroll checks, initiate ACH payments, and edit the master payroll file.
An individual can accept cash receipts, enter transactions in the accounting system, initiate deposits, make deposits at the bank, and reconcile bank statements.
Condition: The School District has a limited number of staff responsible for or access to various stages of the accounting processes.
Cause: The District does not have the number of employees necessary in the business office to properly segregate all duties.
Recommendation: Ideally, the District would hire the number of staff necessary to segregate all duties. However, we realize segregation of duties is not practical, if not impossible. Because of this internal control situation, the responsibility of the Business Manager is greatly increased because the Board must rely on his knowledge of the everyday operations to discover any material changes in the School District’s financial position.
Effect: A lack in separation of duties makes the School District more susceptible to misappropriation of District Assets.
Views of Responsible Official and Planned Corrective Action: See corrective action plan included in this report package.