General Services Administration Needs To Improve Its Internal Controls To Prevent Duplicate Payments

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed payment procedures at the General Services Administration's (GSA) National Capital Region (NCR) finance center to determine: (1) if, and why, duplicate payments were paid for the same goods and services; and (2) NCR efforts to recover duplicate payments from vendors.

GAO found that: (1) 32 duplicate payments amounting to $1.3 million were made due to internal control weaknesses and problems in payment center operating procedures; (2) private vendors were refunding duplicate payments made through the National Electronic Accounting and Reporting (NEAR) System, but NCR officials had not attempted to identify the reason for the duplicate payments; (3) internal controls need to be upgraded; (4) the center relied on manual controls, which were not always effective; and (5) manual payments could not be accessed for computer comparisons to prevent future duplicate payments. GAO also found that: (1) the center lacked adequate physical control over documents used to justify payments; (2) some recipients of duplicate payments did not return government checks, but refunded the improper amount with their own checks on subsequent invoices; (3) fiscal year 1984 automated payment data were incomplete because numerous manual payments had not been entered in the system files; (4) GSA did not have written procedures instructing clerks to process charges for each billing period separately; (5) accounting records were incomplete; and (6) efforts to collect identified duplicate payments were not promptly pursued.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: John F. Simonette Team: General Accounting Office: Accounting and Financial Management Division Phone: (202) 275-9490