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7. Top Auditing Tips. For P-Card Transactions. Managers and approvers are a key control; get them to pay attention:.
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7 Top Auditing Tips For P-Card Transactions
Managers and approvers are a key control; get them to pay attention: Your first line of defense is the manager who approves a transaction, ensuring that all transactions have a clear and justifiable business purpose. Help approving managers understand that simply “rubber-stamping” end of month reports without looking at the details tempts employees and opens the organization for fraud.
Look for spend on weekends and around holidays: If the card holder works a normal week, looking at spend on the weekend might help you to identify fraudulent or mistaken charges.
Track and graph the biggest spenders: Maybe the big guns think it’s harder to find a needle in a larger haystack. We recommend you sort on biggest spenders, graphing expenses over time and looking for spikes in spend. Use your data reporting tools to review month-over-month patterns and make sure the spikes make sense.
Review merchant name, including the card issuer: Auditors look every day for suspicious merchants: upscale clothing stores, hardware stores, utility companies, online retailers. Justification is KEY. Encourage approving managers to review the merchant name and make sure the item/service aligns with the merchant.
Sort by MCC category: When looking for exceptions, sort by MCC, taking a look at codes outside the norm. You can do a quick once over, looking through retail and other categories for merchants that are unlikely to be legit.
Require flight receipts: Some travelers wonder why this is mandatory, especially when booking through a company-sanctioned travel company. "We require a flight receipt to make sure the flight is not in someone else’s name—a spouse, for instance. There could be instances where an employee is going on a business trip and they charge the spouse’s ticket to a company card. It’s easy to sneak through if they do a lot of travel.
Advice on you internal policies and procedures: • Take action immediately if you conclude that fraud has occurred. Follow through on your organization’s policy/consequences for dealing with fraud. Make it known to the organization that fraud has occurred. • Remind cardholders (if applicable): This is not a personal card and it can be taken away • Make them acknowledge policy: Inappropriate expenses are never allowed on the card and could be grounds for cancellation, without notice. • Store reprimands in a human resources file, warning 1… warning 2… so you have a record of steps taken.