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• KSU did not begin to maintain receipts for Go Cards until FY 2022.

Travel and Expense Reimbursement Testing

Efforts to examine travel costs incurred by KSU between July 1, 2018, and June 30, 2021, found KSU was not able to run a report from its accounting system to identify all travel costs paid to an individual. In response to the APA’s request for “a report of all travel or expense reimbursements to KSU personnel and Board of Regents by individual for FY 2019, FY 2020, and FY 2021” KSU provided instead individual Travel Request forms. The Travel Request Forms are to be used in seeking approval for travel and advance payment of travel costs. A review of 50 Travel Request forms found:

• More than half did not have proper approval.
• Six instances employees appear to have received travel advances against KSU travel policy. KSU's policy prohibits travel advances except to provide meals to students. In each of these six instances, no students were identified in the travel.

From individual staff files, 20 staff reimbursements were selected for review to determine if the expenditures incurred by KSU were supported, approved, and allowable. Testing of these reimbursements found:

• KSU failed to retain access to support for over half of the reimbursements. This is discussed further in Finding 16.
• Of the remaining reimbursements, two reimbursements had a total of $1,502 in unsupported expenditures and one instance where the per diem rates used were higher than the reported allowable rate.

Travel expenses are not encumbered and not seen under budget commitments. Additionally, no supporting documentation was provided to determine if the expenditures were properly coded to the correct account/budget unit in Banner. According to KSU staff, one should be able to tell how KSU paid for the travel and the per diem, by looking at the Travel Request forms, but this was not the case. For one Travel Request form searched, the KSU staff could not find any charges in the financial system. It is also unclear from the Travel Request forms who the vendors were, if the expenses were paid by check or credit card, and if the expenses presented were the only expenses related to that travel request form.

Recommendations

We recommend:

• All appropriations, expenditures, disbursements, or contracts greater than $50,000 be presented to the KSU Board of Regents for approval prior to purchase or execution of contract.
• KSU bundle repeat purchases that may in total exceed the threshold for formal or informal bidding to obtain the best price on all items purchased or services provided.