Hi Allie, I'm curious why you are auditing them after payment. Wouldn't it make more sense to perform the audit before payment? What is the benefit of finding out after the payment has already occurred? When we talk about controls, I always point out that we shouldn't be employing any more strenuous controls on reimbursements than we do on invoices. When the amount of spend and risk on invoices is exponentially higher than reimbursements, the controls probably should also be stronger on invoices. UC Berkeley's audit process is for travel, anything over $1,000 and entertainment, anything over $500 is audited prior to payment. It doesn't even come into our audit queue until the department/funding approver has reviewed it and approved it. We feel that covers the majority of risk, using the 80/20 rule, of trying to audit roughly 20% of the transactions, which should cover roughly 80% of the total dollars. We have found that it works well for us.

Hi Dan,
Thanks for this reply and engaging in conversation on the topic! We mandate two levels of approvers prior to each expense report approval on campus.

This post-pay audit of expense reports is an exercise meant to catch instances of fraud, policy noncompliance, and track procedural errors as well(monitor approver performance and traveler compliance). It's a small sample set that we're starting with.