Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
2/6/2015
Though the Department of Energy’s purchase card program generally follows established guidelines, there were several issues with proper documentation at the Office of Environmental Management’s Consolidated Business Center, according to a DOE Office of Inspector General report released this week. The Department uses the General Services Administration’s SmartPay2 program with JP Morgan Chase Bank to provide purchase cards for work-related supplies and services at 18 different offices and 16 contractor sites. “We determined that the Department’s development and implementation of policies and procedures related to the SmartPay2 Program were generally consistent with established guidance,” according to the IG report.
While there were no unauthorized or prohibited transactions at EM’s CBC, 59 percent of the statements of account there “lacked dates of reconciliation by cardholders or approving officials,” the IG found. “We also observed that one statement was missing the approving official’s signature.” It added, “EMCBC’s Organizational Program Coordinator informed us that due to the volume of documents that need to be reviewed, statements with missing signatures and dates were overlooked, resulting in payments being made without approval.”
The IG recommended that cardholders at CBC make sure that statements with required signatures are sent to the organizational program coordinator and that they are then verified for accuracy and completeness “in a timely manner,” The report noted that DOE has put into place “additional data mining capabilities,” according to the IG, which improved its ability to monitor transactions and “eliminated the need for manual spot checking of credit card transactions during monthly billing cycles.”