Follow-Up Audit of Sarasota County Area Transit (SCAT) Bus Operations Cash Handling, December 2017

10 | F o l l o w - u p o f S C A T B u s O p e r a t i o n s C a s h H a n d l i n g D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 7 7. Timely submission of deposit documentation Current Status, Follow-Up Audit dated August 2017: All Receipts for Deposit of County Funds (this test included all sources of revenue for SCAT) from May 1, 2017 through July 17, 2017 were reviewed to determine the timeliness of preparation and submittal to the Comptroller. A total of 231 deposits were reviewed with the following issues noted:  13 instances where deposit documentation was submitted between five and eight days after the deposit was validated by the bank.  26 instances where deposit documentation was submitted either three or four days after the deposit was validated by the bank.  45 instances where deposit documentation was submitted two days after the deposit was validated by the bank. It appears that Receipts for Deposit of County Funds (RFDCFs) are not being submitted the next business day as required by the Accounting Policies and Procedures 9.2 Business Center Receipt, Balance and Deposit of Cash . Original Audit Observation, Report dated November 2016: Accounting Policies and Procedures 9.2 Business Center Receipt, Balance, and Deposit of Cash requires business centers to prepare a RFDCF no later than the next business day and to submit the form, along with the yellow copy of the Bank Deposit Slip and supporting documents to the Comptroller. The Comptroller is responsible for reviewing bank deposits via the bank’s secure online portal and for posting deposit information to the general ledger. The RFDCFs submitted by SCAT are used for posting data to the general ledger. The auditor was provided a system report by the Comptroller listing all RFDCFs received by the Comptroller from SCAT Administration for May 1, 2016, through July 31, 2016. The data included the date when the documents were received by the Comptroller and the date when the corresponding deposits were observed on the bank transaction data. It was observed that for the total 242 RFDCFs included on the report, there were seventy instances where the data showed that the documents were received at least three working days after the deposit was observed on the online bank transaction data. Of these seventy instances, twenty‐seven showed seven working days or more between the two dates. Untimely submission of deposit information results in untimely posting to the general ledger and is not compliant with the Clerk of the Court and County Comptroller Accounting Policy and Procedure.