Program Pitfall

Manually auditing 100% of transactions each month has prevailed since the beginning of card payments, especially within public sector organizations. Despite being costly and cumbersome, it often stems from a fear of landing in the news for card misuse. The drawbacks of this type of auditing approach go beyond the labor cost. Humans are prone to making mistakes and they cannot possibly look at every little thing. Further, when one or more employees are consumed with auditing tasks every month, they do not have time to accomplish much else. To prevent your organization from falling into this trap, see the suggestions below.

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Suggestions for Combatting Manual Transaction Audits

If your auditing efforts are primarily manual today:

  • Take the time to calculate the labor cost, based on the amount of time spent auditing and the average compensation of the employees performing the audits.

  • Compare the labor cost to the value and severity of issues found as a result. You might be spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars to find few issues.

  • Explore automated auditing solutions, which can be tailored to your business rules and are often more effective than manual audits. Depending on your current labor cost, you might get a return on your investment more quickly than you think. Solutions are available from a variety of providers. Start by talking with your card issuer.

If you are not able to pursue automation, at a minimum consider:

  • a more strategic approach; view examples of audit criteria

  • using Microsoft Excel or similar to filter and sort transactions collectively versus auditing each individual cardholder statement

Avoid the costly trap of manually auditing all transactions every month.

Avoid the costly trap of manually auditing all transactions every month.