Purpose of Audit

The purpose of our audit was to evaluate the District’s payroll procedures for the period July 1, 2014 through December 31, 2015.

Background

The William Floyd Union Free School District is located in the Town of Brookhaven, Suffolk County. The District, which operates eight schools with approximately 8,700 students, is governed by an elected seven-member Board of Education. Budgeted appropriations for the 2015-16 fiscal year totaled $222.9 million.

Key Findings

• District officials did not adequately segregate payroll duties or establish sufficient compensating controls over the payroll process.
• The District does not have adequate procedures in place to ensure overtime is preapproved, and District officials generally did not preapprove overtime worked by employees.
• No one independent of the payroll process reviews hourly rates or annual salaries entered by the Payroll Manager for accuracy or compares the payroll registers with payroll source documents (i.e., time records) to ensure that payments were based on the actual hours or days worked prior to payroll processing.

Key Recommendations

• Either segregate payroll processing duties or implement compensating controls, such as increased oversight and/or management reviews of the Payroll Manager’s work.
• Implement procedures to properly control and monitor overtime by approving and providing justification for overtime before the work is performed.
• Compare payroll registers to source documents when certifying payrolls to ensure that payments are based on actual hours or days worked and Board-authorized hourly rates or annual salaries.