Appendix 2 - Monitoring Plan Definitions

The University of Texas at Austin

Segregation of Duties and Reconciliation of Accounts Monitoring Plan

June 2020

Appendix 2 - Monitoring Plan Definitions

Account Owner: Financial Officers, Deans, and/or Unit Heads responsible for the activity processed through a given account.

Active Account A budget group (8 digit) that has any completed (final approved) transaction posted during the month at the account level (10 digit)

Adequately Reviewed: A completed transaction which has received multiple levels of review and approval by different individuals in university departments.

Approvers: A UT employee setup to electronically approve documents, based on UTEID. 

Certification: For non-material activity, can be inferred by real time departmental review and approvals at multiple segregated levels.  All other certifications may be performed through web based Expenditure Account Certification (EAC) or DEFINE based LMM process.

Financial Reporting Officer: Per UTS 142.1, each UT institution must designate a single financial reporting responsible party, known as the Financial Reporting Officer.  The Financial Reporting Officer is directly responsible to the Chief Administrative Officer for the integrity of the institution’s annual financial report.  The Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Officer (SVP&CFO) is the Financial Reporting Officer for UT Austin.  The SVP&CFO will notify UT System if the Financial Reporting Officer is delegated to another staff member.

Material: 3% or higher of 1/12th of the budget assigned for that budget group. Certification is required for budget group if no budget is assigned and there are net outflows that lack at least three approvers, including encumbrances.  Materiality will be periodically reviewed to ensure adequate coverage.

Net Outflows Including Encumbrances: This is a net outflow of funds at the budget group level, not between accounts within a budget group.  Exceptions to this are as follows, and is based on low risk due to source of entries.

  • Fringes  (automatic calculation managed centrally)
  • Admin Fee (automatic calculation managed centrally)
  • Budget entries (90XX) (approved and reviewed centrally)
  • RET’s (when document is returned, the system programmatically creates a reversing entry, which nets out the transaction.)

Revenue: Incoming funds, typically recorded with “3XXX” object codes, for sales and services. 

Reconciliation: Although this term as used in the financial and other industries literally means “Process of matching and comparing figures from accounting records against those presented on a bank statement,“ in UTS 142.1 and this audit recommendation it means the process whereby department personnel periodically review or monitor the reasonableness and appropriateness of financial activity that have occurred within one’s departmental accounting records.

Last updated 06/02/2020