Auditing and internal auditing – Procountor

This article covers the information about how auditing and internal auditing can be executed in Procountor, by utilizing different functions.

Auditing in Procountor

Procountor enables electronic auditing, which is independent of time and place.
The person executing the auditing must be given the adequate user rights.
If the auditor already has an existing Procountor username, he/she must be added to Procountor environment as an existing user instead of creating a new one. Thus, the audit can login to all companies’ environments to be audited, with the same username and password.

User rights of the auditor

The user rights of the auditor can be defined on Users and privileges view, which can be accessed by choosing Management > Users and privileges.
There is a fixed user role Management / Auditor, which includes the needed user rights for auditing.
- The role enables viewing the information. The auditor with Management / Auditor role can only edit his/her own personal information.
The main user of the Procountor environment gives the user rights to the auditor.
Every person in auditing team (in need to use Procountor) should have their own user name in Procountor.
After the auditing is executed, the main user can remove the persons added to the Procountor environment for the auditing.

Receipt search in Procountor

Receipts can be search with different search criteria on the Receipt search view.
Receipt search can be accessed by choosing Search > Receipt search.
The possible search types are Invoices, Open invoices, Invoices to approve and Invoices to pay.
The considerable search types from the auditing point of view are Invoices and Open invoices.

Invoices

The search type Invoices enables to search and review the sales, purchase, travel, and expense invoices, along with salaries and journals.
After the search is executed it is possible to observe the receipts and their attachments (such as the picture of the invoice) and accounting.
The search can be limited based on invoice dates, accounting periods and receipt type.
The timestamp shows the creator of the invoice and the person who last edited the invoice.
On the Verification view of the purchase, travel and expense invoices it can be seen who has verified and approved the invoice and when.
At the bottom of the Accounting view of the invoice it can be seen, who has been the last one to edit the accounting of the receipt.

Open invoices

The search type Open invoices enables balancing the open receipts.
For example, when balancing the accounts receivables at the turn of the year, the search criteria is the following:
- Receipt type: Sales invoice
- The payment transactions until: 31.12.20xx
- Accounting period between field’s ending date should be set to 20xx-12, since, for example, the insurance invoices can be dated to the ending financial year, even though they are accrued to the next financial year.
- When auditing accounts payables, the receipt types searched should be purchase, travel and expense invoices.
Open accounts receivable listed as per the final day of the financial period can be searched from Accounting > Reconciliation tools > Reconciliation report for open invoices > Accounts receivable > Search. For the final day of the financial period > Search open invoices.
Open accounts payable listed as per the final day of the financial period can be searched from Accounting > Reconciliation tools > Reconciliation report for open invoices > Payment transaction account > Search. For the final day of the financial period > Search open invoices.
Age distribution of invoices for accounts receivable and accounts payable can be searched from Reports > Payment reports > Age distribution of invoices.

Viewing the salaries

Salary lists can be searched on Salary list search view, which can be accessed by choosing Payroll > Salary list search. On the Salary list search view, it is possible to search for salary slips and then observe the lists and the individual salary slips.
Reporting of the salaries can be observed on the Salaries reporting (new) view, which can be accessed by choosing Reports > Salaries reporting (new).

Viewing the payments

Bank account-specific bank statements and reference payments can be searched on Bank statements and reference payments view, which can be accessed by choosing Payments > Bank statements and reference payments.
The auditor can verify the bank account’s balance in Procountor, since the content on the bank statement formed by the bank cannot be edited in Procountor.
Several reports regarding the payments can be found from Reports > Payment reports.

Viewing accounting reports and notifications

From Notifications, it is possible to view VAT and income tax return, as well as salary reports.
The desired Accounting report type (statement of earnings, balance sheet, general ledger, general journal etc.) can be selected on the Accounting reports view (Reports > Accounting reports).
- For all accounting reports, it is possible to select the report format of HTML, PDF or Excel.
- It is possible to drill down to receipts from the reports, which enables observing individual receipts and their accounting and attachments.
- When searching for general ledger or general journal, account numbers can be used to limit the number of transactions examined, e.g. choose only balance sheet accounts (1000-2999) or only income statement accounts (3000-9999).
- When searching for statement of earnings or balance sheet, more detailed reports can be run by selecting All accounts to the Report length field.
The Accounts and transactions report makes it possible to view account balances and transactions, to access receipt and bank statement details and to print the receipt accounting page, for instance. The content of different accounts, such as the expense account and accrual accounts, can be viewed. Reports > Reconciliation tools > Accounts and transactions.
The Partner checking report makes it easier to check the accounts, sums and VAT percentages for customers, suppliers and other persons. Reports > Reconciliation tools > Partner checking report.
Partner receivables report verifies actual liabilities and receivables. The report can be sent in printable format to a supplier for supplier balance confirmations, for instance. Search business partner: information about a certain business partner can be searched for. Reports > Payment reports > Partner receivables report old.
Dimension reports, e.g. Tekes inspection and managerial accounting reports Accounting > Accounting reports > New search criterion Dimensions. Select Dimension and then select Items > Report columns > Every dimension code and total sum or Every month and total sum.

Exporting the data to files

Reports can be run in HTML, PDF or Excel format, which can all be opened or saved as files for further processing or archiving.
Invoices can be exported to HTML or PDF format by clicking on the Preview button.
Receipts can also be printed out from the Preview.
Invoice information can be retrieved to Excel file on the Receipt search view (Search > Receipt search) by clicking on the Printable list button (activates after the search is executed) and then choosing Brief export file or Extended export file. The Search result and VAT-specification selection exports invoice and VAT information to PDF or HTML format.

Internal auditing in Procountor

User rights

User rights form the basis for internal auditing in Procountor.
By defining user rights, the main user can limit access to information that other users do not need in their work.
It is possible to select a ready user role for the user or modify the user rights to fit the needs of the user.
There are three categories of user rights: no rights, viewing rights and all rights.
- Further information about user rights can be found here.

Information security

In addition to SSL encryption, the service uses changing passwords, so that using Procountor is as safe as paying bills through online bank.

Verifying and approving

Depending on the scope of the company’s operations, it is possible to specify a one- or two-tiered approval system for payment transactions.
In small organizations approving and paying are sufficient rights to manage the payment transactions.
In larger companies, it may be appropriate to adopt a verification step in which the person responsible for verification notifies the approver that he/she considers the purchase invoice to be correct and eligible for payment.
It is also possible to adopt approval circulation of invoices, which enables specifying the desired number of verifiers and approvers for invoices.

User stamps

The creator of each transaction is registered in Procountor, i.e., each transaction and editing leaves timestamp to Procountor.
The username registered for the user is used as the identifier.
The time of creating or editing a transaction is registered based on the computer’s clock.
This makes it possible to establish with certainty who created or edited a transaction and when.

Balancing

Bank account balancing enables reliable monitoring of the accuracy of accounting.
- Since the bank statement includes separate sum entries for sales ledger transactions (reference payments) and purchase ledger payments (invoice payment service) to be entered in the books, balancing the bank account provides certainty that accounts receivable and payable have been processed correctly.
Internal balancing of the accounts cannot provide certainty on whether all sales and purchases have been entered in the company’s accounting.
- If a receipt is not written for sales or cash sales is not entered in the daily accounts, this can be discovered during a warehouse inventory or from sales margin calculations.
- Purchase invoices received as e-invoices or through scanning service are automatically saved to Procountor (in Received status), after which they should be processed and paid. Mailed invoices must be saved to Procountor by the user.
Several reports that are useful in balancing can be found from Accounting > Reconciliation tools.

Other materials that may be needed for an auditor

Banks’ balance confirmations by bank account, to be requested from banks (to be included as an attachment)
Cash assets balancing balance (to be included as an attachment)
Average number of personnel during the financial period (to be included as an attachment)
Minutes of the Board of Directors and general meetings (to be included as an attachment)
Tax decision of the previous year (to be included as an attachment)
Other receipts, if any, such as mortgages, securities and pledges given and other liabilities, shareholder loans and collaterals, leasing contracts, abstracts of title, e.g. in financial statement as specifications (or to be included as an attachment)

The materials can be collected for auditing into a separate customer folder of the company or on a memory stick or added to Procountor as an attachment to the journal receipt. Save a new journal with the name “Auditing journal”, date: the final day of the financial period. You can save the documents you want on the Accounting page of the journal under Attachments.

Searching for an auditing journal in Procountor: enter “Auditing journal” in the Search field.

Document management

If a company has taken Document management into use, Documents view can be found in Search > Documents. Documents view is used to search documents that are attached to different locations in the environment for example, saving the minutes of shareholders’ meetings or other essential company documents.

Additional information

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