Report 2018-301 Recommendation 7 Responses

Report 2018-301: Judicial Branch Procurement: Some Superior Courts Generally Followed Requirements but Could Improve Their Procurement Practices (Release Date: January 2019)

Recommendation #7 To: Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara

The Santa Clara court should establish and implement procedures to ensure that adequate separation of duties exists for procurement. These procedures should specifically prevent a single individual from both approving an invoice's amount and then also authorizing its payment.

6-Month Agency Response

The Procurement and Accounting departments met on June 3, 2019 to discuss the current duties of the law library coordinator and the issues surrounding the processing of invoices which needed be moved back to the accounting department to comply with state auditors recommendations.

Both departments agreed to the return of the invoicing functions to the accounting department and discussed the new procedures to implement the change going forward. The Law Library Invoice Procedures were then modified to reflect the changes agreed on by both departments.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 6-Month Status: Fully Implemented

60-Day Agency Response

- The Santa Clara Court is reviewing its current approval structure for invoices and payments and revising it to clearly identify various authorization levels with various officers of the Court responsible for reviewing and approving Court invoices and payments. Insuring that backup personnel is assigned for each designated approver to avoid mistakes that took place in the past. The Court will also be restructuring its payment approval levels to clearly show each Court officers approval authority level and monitory thresholds for their level of authority. Future trainings will be provided to Court approvers that approving invoices and Court staff handling and entering goods receipts in SAP to insure that Court staff fully understands their duties and authorization levels.

- The Court is taking steps to identify and correct areas where separation of duties were crossed due to lack of staffing in the finance and procurement departments. Once these areas are identified the job functions will be routed back to the proper departments and separation of duties guidelines will be reviewed with staff to insure that these issues do not happen again.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 60-Day Status: Pending

All Recommendations in 2018-301

Agency responses received are posted verbatim.