I have a question for those counties that only pay bills
once a month at board. The state auditors have written us up because we
are not paying bills within the 35 day under the state statute. Has
anyone else been written up for this? What have you done to correct
this?
Gladys Kirsch
Fiscal Supervisor
McLeod County Social Services
320-864-1344
3 comments:
Here are our procedures, including the statute.
Prompt Payment of Local Government Bills
1. Wright County HHS must make payments within 35 days of the date of receipt. Date of receipt means the completed delivery of the goods or services or the satisfactory installation, assembly of specified portion thereof, or the receipt of the invoice for the delivery of goods or services, whichever is later. (471.425 Subd 2)
2. Wright County HHS must notify the vendor if an invoice is incorrect, defective or otherwise improper within 10 days of the date of receipt. Upon receiving a corrected invoice from the vendor, WCHHS must pay the obligation within 35 days. (471.425 Subd 3)
3. Interest and/or late fees are not allowable costs under the Federal Uniform Guidance 200.449 and therefore all attempts must be made to make payments prior to the due date of the invoice and within the 35 day requirement.
Brown Co pays 1x per month for the bulk of our bills and does a small 1x per month bill pay which states:
Administrative bills are processed for payment once per month. They are approved for payment at County Commissioners Board meeting. There is also an added check run generally the fourth Tuesday of the month for MA CEI reimbursements, client repayments, utilities, and other claims that are deemed to be necessary to pay by the Fiscal Supervisor (FS) or Account Technicians (AT). The added check run should only be used if needed and requests for this should be avoided if at all possible.
I should add to the policy the added check run payments are sent to the next board mtg for approval after the payment has been sent.
Douglas County also was written up for the same issue for our 2017 audit and we use a private audit firm. The one bill that was like this was one that had to be reconciled (state of MN bill) and due to vacation schedules it didn't make it into the normal run. We have stressed the importance to all accounting staff and department heads/workers in each department to get the bills to us timely due to this rule and will do special runs if we need to just so we hopefully won't have this happen again.
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