The Office of the Comptroller of Puerto Rico issued an adverse opinion on the fiscal operations of the General Services Administration of Puerto Rico (ASG). The tests performed and the evidence revealed that the operations related to the collections, recording, accounting and reconciliation of the funds collected were not carried out, in all significant respects, in accordance with the applicable law and regulations.
The Report reveals that since 2017 transactions were not recorded in the accounts payable module of the internal accounting system MAS 200; nor were payroll expenses recorded on the date of the transaction but rather in aggregate form, and the Audit Log option was not used to audit the transactions in the system.
In addition, the MAS 200 system reports reflected that 87% of $29,062,073 in wage entries were recorded up to two years late, 78% were not recorded in the corresponding year, and 6% did not contain the amount.
The three-finding audit also points out that, as of December 6, 2021, the ASG had $12,491,750 in accounts receivable with balances pending collection for more than two years and seven months. In addition, contrary to the provisions of law, the reasons for eliminating some 10 wage entries from the MAS 200 accounting system were not documented.
These situations do not allow the ASG to have complete and reliable financial information on the results of its operations. In addition, the Agency also did not perform the bank reconciliations nor the reconciliation of accounts with the Department of the Treasury.
The auditors identified that from 2019 to 2020, the auxiliary director of Finance and Budget issued 282 manual official receipts for $2,114,156 without being appointed as a collector by the Department of the Treasury.
In addition, the last inventory of the official receipt books had been carried out on June 29, 2018. Similar situations had been published in three previous audit reports: DB-09-27, of May 15, 2009, DA-15-45 of June 21, 2015, and DA-16-36 on May 20, 2016.
Contrary to current regulations, the director of Finance and Budget did not prepare the Remittance Voucher to account for and record 194 credit advices for $1,151,019 of deposits received in the bank from 2019 to 2022. The advices went up to three consecutive years without being accounted for and recorded in the Agency's account.
The Report discloses that the collecting employees did not account for 78 deposits totaling $1,201,908. These deposits had gone up to 16 years without being accounted for. In addition, as of December 10, 2021, the ASG had a balance of $530,900 in fee income from the Single Provider Registry, not accounted for in the agency's account figures.
These delays in accounting for the credit advices and the deposits are due to the fact that the funds were not accounted for in accordance with Regulation 25, on the Collection, Deposit, Control and Accounting of Public Funds Collected by Official or Substitute Collectors and their Auxiliaries.
The audit comments that upon the cessation on August 30, 2021, of an official collector on assignment since 2018, a physical inventory of valuables was not carried out in his presence. A special assistant performed a count of the valuables in the vault and found $23,294 in undeposited checks.
The Report recommends that the administrator and chief procurement officer of the ASG consider this situation regarding taking the inventory of the outgoing official collector so that it does not happen again.
This first report covers the period from February 1, 2019 to June 30, 2020
See Audit Report DA-23-18.
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