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FOI request (FOI-68671322)
Finance Systems
Requested Thu 22 February 2018
Responded Tue 20 March 2018- Does the council outsource their transactional services to another authority or shared service?
- Which Finance system is used by the authority (Oracle, Agresso, Sage, E-Financial, SAP etc.)
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Has this finance system
been used for the last 6 years?
- If no, what finance system was previously in place?
- When did this system change take place?
- Please state the total number of Accounts Payable invoices processed by the authority in the last financial year (16/17)
- Please provide a breakdown of the total value of Accounts Payable invoices (3rd party supplier spend) for each of the last 6 years.
- How many active suppliers are currently on the supplier master file?
- How many inactive suppliers are currently on the supplier master file?
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Is 3rd party
pre-payment software utilised by the authority to prevent
invoice payment errors from occurring?
- If so, please provide contract period
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Over the last 6 years,
please state the name(s) of all external organisation(s)
used to review Accounts Payable transactions and identify
and recover erroneous payments (Duplicates, Overpayments,
VAT input errors or credits on statements), and the
period(s) reviewed by each.
- Please state the total value of moneys recovered by each provider in the period(s) reviewed.
- Please state the total amount paid to any external parties/ total cost to of utilising these services, for this review work.
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Do you
use any external provider to
ensure invoices correlate to the contract
charges i.e. checking
volume discounts have been applied
(please state name)?
- What % fee or rates does the authority pay for this service?
- Please provide a contact list for finance & procurement departments at the authority
- What internal controls does the authority have to prevent payment errors occurring (3 way matching, no PO no PAY, invoice scanning etc.)
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Does the authority conduct
supplier statement reconciliation exercises on any
suppliers?
- If so, what selection criteria is adhered to?
Response
Please accept my apologies for the delay in responding.
Q1 - No
Q2 - Agresso
Q3 - Yes, 6 years +
Q4 - 13,743
Q5 -2011/12 - £3,960,445.01 2012/13 - £4,158,907.952013/14 - £3,715,454.882014/15 - £3,662,200.902015/16 - £3,516,461.972016/17 - £3,570,482.00
Q6 - 2174
Q7 - 11837
Q8 - The council has considered but does not use third party pre-payment software to prevent pre-payment. AGRESSO working on invoice number identifies potential duplicate payments and we action possible duplicate payments highlighted to us from the National Fraud Initiative exercise carried out every 2 years.
Q9 - We have not retained a record of the monies recovered.
Q9.2 We pay the fixed fee for a large local authority that covers other data matches also and is circa. £2,000.
Q10 - We do not pay an external provider to ensue invoice charges correlate to contract charges. However, internal audit examines final accounts for large contract projects before final settlement is made
Q11 - Hastings Borough Council is part of the East Sussex Procurement Hub and can be reached at procurement@hastings.gov.uk
Q12 - The key controls to prevent payment errors occurring are 3-way matching and the in-built system check to stop invoice numbers being input more than once. A sample of payments is audited by internal and external audit every year to assess adequacy of controls.
Q13 - Any items 30 days or over on statements are investigated
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