Southtowns Record

West Seneca Central School District - Community Education (2019M-241)

Government
West Seneca Central School District
Posted by publisher
Mar 6, 2020
Kind
State audit
Topics
Audits and oversight

Publisher's summary

District officials did not review or reconcile electronic payments with cash receipts records to verify that all amounts were collected and remitted to the District. As a result, the District did not initially receive more than $5,500 in fees recorded as collected but not remitted by a vendor in January 2019. In November 2019, the vendor agreed to fully reimburse the District for lost revenue. In addition, the Board did not adopt written enforcement policies for overdue accounts and the Coordinator did not ensure overdue accounts were invoiced in a timely manner. We reviewed an accounts receivable aging report for the before and after school program and identified 75 accounts with outstanding balances totaling almost $28,000 as of August 13, 2019.

Original document

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After we notified District officials of this discrepancy, the Coordinator contacted
the vendor and was told that certain online payments failed to process and post
correctly on January 14, 2019. District officials did not realize that the payments
were unsuccessful and told us that they did not want to seek payment from
parents or guardians since so much time had already passed. In January 2020,
the vendor reimbursed the District for the lost revenue.

We also identified three payments for continuing education classes totaling $113
that were recorded in daily revenue reports but not deposited by the vendor. The
three payments were also electronic online payments that failed to process and
post correctly. As a result, three individuals were able to take classes without
paying. Because the amount was immaterial, District officials told us that they
would not seek to recover the fees from the parties or vendor.

Due to these control deficiencies and exceptions, we expanded our testing and
reviewed all electronic payments totaling approximately $314,000 remitted by the
before and after school program vendor from February 2019 through September
2019. We did not identify any additional discrepancies.

Although Department personnel reconciled daily cash collections for cash and
check payments collected at the Department, they did not review electronic
payments even though the majority of programs fees were collected online.
Moreover, the Department does not have a reconciliation process to compare
registration records such as class rosters, sign-in sheets and daily attendance
records to daily cash collection reports. Because registration records are not
reconciled with daily cash collection reports, District officials cannot be certain
all registrants paid the appropriate fees or that all receipts were recorded and
deposited. If District officials had provided adequate oversight and review of
the vendors’ collections or Department personnel had performed adequate
reconciliations, these revenue losses may have been prevented or detected.

Enforcement Procedures for Overdue Accounts Were Inadequate
The Board did not adopt written enforcement policies for overdue accounts and
the Coordinator did not ensure all overdue accounts were invoiced in a timely
manner.

We reviewed an accounts receivable aging report for the before and after school
program and identified 75 accounts with outstanding balances totaling almost
$28,000 as of August 13, 2019. The majority of these balances totaling $19,300
(69 percent) were more than 90 days past due; however, Department personnel
only generated and mailed invoices for 32 accounts with balances totaling less
than $4,000 on August 15, 2019. Department personnel told us that they did not
invoice some accounts because there was no effective mechanism to enforce

  Of f ic e of t he New York State Comptroller  3