Public Sector

CaseWare IDEA Applications

Government systems often relate to the payment of benefits, grants, assistance, etc. to individuals and to organizations. The tests with IDEA tend to be specific to the particular system (which is often unique) but there are some general categories of tests:

Analyses

• Analyze sales and profitability by area, salesperson, month, store, category, vendor or all
• Summarize receipts by type
• Summarize cash receipts by the account code distribution for reconciliation to general ledger postings
• Summarize shipments by warehouse for product distribution analyses
• Produce analytical review information on sales by value band
• Analyze product demand by summarising products by due date
• Analyze open orders and open invoices by customer for credit control
• Reconcile booked items to inventory reserved (on hold) items

Calculations

• Reproduce sales summaries, posting totals
• Test pricing, discount calculations on invoices
• Control profits by calculating line item margins before shipment
• Analyze variances in sales and summarize trends numerically or graphically
• Report on the correlation between items shipped and items ordered
• Isolate detail and average backlog by customer, item, location, etc.

Exception Tests

• Identify sales values higher than usual for item type
• Identify sales prices less than expected for product type or large discounts given
• Identify large credit notes
• Identify high-volume amounts by products, customers, sales representative, store, etc.
• Extract all sales data for audit by customer, product, region, etc.

Gaps and Duplicates

• Missing sales invoice numbers
• Missing dispatch note numbers
• Duplicate invoices (either duplicate invoice number, dispatch number, or customer and detail/ amount)

Matching and Comparing

• Match the benefits file to the employees' payroll file using the address, postal code, or bank account details
• Cross-match the benefit beneficiary name with names on other benefit systems, the electoral system,or central register
• Cross-match addresses with property registers (where available) to ensure a valid address has been given
• Cross-match bank account details/addresses with employee payroll information

Warning: There may be certain legal considerations in different countries on whether crossmatching between systems is allowed. Experience indicates that the incidence of error or fraud is often higher in certain groups or categories of people. Tests with IDEA in these areas are often very effective, but again care must be taken not to infringe on any laws or regulations, particularly in relation to minority groups.