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Audit Objective

Determine whether New Hartford Central School District (District) officials ensured the District accurately paid employees’ salary and wages.

Key Findings

Our audit found that District officials accurately paid $3.1 million in salaries and wages to the 48 employees we tested, in accordance with Board authorizations. However, there are opportunities for District officials to strengthen internal controls over payroll. Officials did not:

• Adequately segregate the duties of or establish adequate compensating controls over the payroll clerk who could add new employees to the financial system and was responsible for adding and changing salaries and pay rates, processing the payroll, and signing and distributing payroll checks.
• Ensure payroll user permissions were restricted to employees based on job duties.
• Ensure the Assistant Superintendent for Business Affairs (Assistant Superintendent) or another employee routinely monitored the payroll clerk’s work by comparing payroll source documents to payrolls to mitigate the risks related to the payroll clerk’s duties.

Key Recommendations

• Segregate payroll processing duties or implement adequate compensating controls.
• Ensure users’ payroll permissions are limited to their authorized job duties.
• Properly monitor the payroll clerk’s work.

District officials agreed with our recommendations and have initiated, or indicated they planned to initiate corrective action.