Education

Financial Aid

• Identify aid in excess of needs assessment and overpayments
• Monitor loan agreements for repayment
• Find course withdrawals below full-time course load, without a corresponding reduction in aid

Travel & Expense

• Identify frequent travelers and corresponding compliance with travel policies and procedures
• Pinpoint travel over holiday periods for potential personal travel

Purchasing Cards

• Monitor for duplicate payments between p-card merchants and accounts payable vendors
• Check for charges at inappropriate Merchants (i.e. travel, food, fuel) by MCC code
• Pinpoint Split charges to circumvent purchasing card limits
• Highlight cards used by terminated employees and/or employees on leave of absence

Tuition Billing

• Compare refund check addresses to employee addresses or drop boxes Identify missing refund check numbers
• Compare refund payments to refund policy
• Review students with more than three address changes in one academic year

Salaries & Payroll

• Identify multiple paychecks to same bank account Compare check amounts per ledger to electronic bank files
• List employees with salary increases greater than a specified percent
• Compare refund payments to refund policy

Compliance

• Identify expenditures made outside a grant’s effective dates
• Identify unaccountable charges (administrative costs) based on grant rules to be compliant with government and other grantor’s regulations

Kickback or Conflict-of-Interest Schemes

• Look for vendor prices greater than the standard
• Identify price increases greater than acceptable percentages
• Check for continued purchases in spite of high rates or returns, rejections, or credits
• Look for high volume purchases from one vendor

Asset Management

• Identify fully depreciated items and assets higher than replacement cost
• Recap asset values, in value order, by net or cost amount
• Recalculate expense and reserve amounts using replacement costs
• Compare useful lives of assets by category
• Extract assets with useful lives or depreciation rates beyond set norms

Schools have many of the standard ledgers. Payroll and Accounts Payable can be key concerns. Typical test areas include:

Phantom Vendor Schemes

• Match names, addresses, and phone numbers between employee and vendor files
• Check vendor addresses against marketing address lists

Questionable Invoices

• Identify invoices without a valid purchase order
• Look for invoices from vendors not in the approved vendor file
• Find invoices for more than one purchase order authorization
• Identify multiple invoices with the same item description
• Extract vendors with duplicate invoice numbers
• Look for multiple invoices for the same amount on the same day
• Find invoice payments issued on non-business days (e.g., Saturdays and Sundays)
• Identify multiple invoices at or just under approval cut-off levels