Dear Colleague,

As you have probably heard, our outside auditors have noted credit card compliance problems (approvals & documentation) in our audit management letter that we needed to address. New accounting standards that take affect during this fiscal year are also requiring additional internal controls be implemented. The program has been redesigned and is effective for the January statement.

Major program changes include:

  1. Supervisors/budget managers will assume the approver functions.
  2. Cardholders complete their own credit card statement reporting whenever possible. Cardholders should have at least 1 reconciler assigned as backup.
  3. Reconcilers back up cardholders that are traveling, ill, on vacation, or without computer access.
  4. Credit card statements and receipts will be sent, audited and stored in the Accounts Payable Office. Supervisors may request to see Cardholder receipts before they are sent to the Accounts Payable Office to have better understanding of purchases in their area of responsibility. All material receipts should be reviewed by supervisors.
  5. Stepped up effort by the Accounts Payable Office using email reminders and card deactivation to help cardholders avoid IRS penalties. (see link below)

As a supervisor, your approval of expenditures is very important in assuring expenditures are within budget, resources are focused on achieving our short-term and long-term objectives and funds are never used for personal items.

We encourage all supervisors/approvers to review receipts before sending them to the Accounts Payable Office in order to get a better feel for the transactions in your area. That said, the system will allow you to perform all your approver responsibilities on line from any where in the world where you have access to a computer by simply examining each cardholder’s statement and hitting “approval complete.” You can ask that another person be set up as an alternate approver. The down side for that individual would be many automatic emails.

Other information:

If you have questions, please contact Deb Juenke at x3792 or juenke@stolaf.edu (for last names starting with A - L) or Jayne Kiesler at x3406 or kieslerj@stolaf.edu (for last names starting with M - Z).

Thank you!