Internal Controls

Michael V. McKee, VP and CFO

I would like to take a moment to remind all employees working with UF business systems and those otherwise responsible for business at UF of the tools and processes that exist to help us maintain good internal controls. Internal controls
protect the university and those employees with a fiduciary responsibility.

The reconciliation of payment and receipt transactions in the accounting system (myUFL) is one of many internal controls that must be in place in a department.

Please see our best practice guidance at: http://www.fa.ufl.edu/forms-and-publications/best-practice-guides/
The reconciliation process compares transactions recorded on the department’s accounts in the university general ledger (myUFL) to source documents to determine which are complete and accurate or in error and require correction.
This process gives responsible employees the ability to:

• Verify the accuracy of transactions posted to the accounting system for
• each budgetary cost center
• Identify errors
• Process corrections

Similarly, approval processes are in place for the management and oversight of all
Purchasing Card uses.

The PCard is an invaluable procurement tool for minor purchases and travel expenditures for official university business. Appropriate approval processes are outlined here at:
http://identity.it.ufl.edu/identity-coordination/coordination-roles/who-should-be-the-approver/.

In short, the approver should not report to the person(s) who initiates the transaction. In the event a cardholder’s transactions are not approved by their supervisor, the supervisor should establish compensating controls. For example, we recommend supervisors perform and document monthly reviews of the PCard Paid Charges Aging Report. This historical report showing monthly charges by cardholder and other guidance can be retrieved from the myUFL system at:
http://www.purchasing.ufl.edu/departments/pcard/procedures/aging.asp.

The UF Board of Trustees has adopted Internal Control Principles as high level guidance at: http://www.fa.ufl.edu/controller/internal-control/ and the Finance and Accounting Division has established Directives and Procedures on Internal Controls that provide more detailed guidance at: http://www.fa.ufl.edu/directives-and-procedures/accounting-and-reporting/#departmental. In addition, Finance and Accounting in conjunction with the Office of Internal Audit has provided an Internal Control Checklist at:
http://www.fa.ufl.edu/controller/internal-control/checklist/ that is available for all UF employees.

Finally, UF has many myUFL toolkits at: http://hr.ufl.edu/learn-grow/just-in-time-%20training/myufl-toolkits/procurement/ and training at: http://hr.ufl.edu/learn-grow/professional-development/myufl-system-training/
in myUFL business systems.

We will provide more specific and detailed guidance directly to the various transaction processors and supervisors in the near future.