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Krystal Runner . Dec 2 7:22am | Last reply Dec 5 8:19pm Good morning class, Discuss some areas of government funds or operations where you believe internal controls should be implemented, such as independent verification or separation of duties. Since | work in the government sector, | can provide examples of where internal controls should be implemented at the higher level as well as school level. We had this one case about 20 years ago where our accountant in charge of payroll was embezzling funds. That has never happened before so they were lax when it comes to segregation of duties. He was the only one in charge of timesheets so it was very easy to inflate those numbers. Luckily it was caught within a year but the embarrassment on both our part and his was longer than that. The opportunity was there for him to commit this crime. Since then, segregation of duties has been implemented in the payroll department. The timesheets are first entered by one employee then given to the payroll department who verifies the amount. The checks are then processed by another department. Once a year, our external auditors perform a payroll audit. According to Tam (2024), segregation of duties is essential in preventing overpayment schemes from happening. Just having one other person to review and approve timesheets could prevent this from occurring. We have had some situations in the school level activities funds as well in our state. There was a situation where 2 rangefinders were purchased by the golf department. The purchase is allowable so who would have thought to look. The external auditors are actually the one who would find it. She was curious as to what it was so she called the bookkeeper. The bookkeeper really didn't know so she called the golf coach. Well he knew what it was but he didn't purchase them. After digging more, they concluded the principal purchased both with school activity funds and it was at his personal hunting camp. There was segregation of duties at this particular school but they were weak. Now any purchases from athletics have to be requested by the coach, turned into the bookkeeper, and then approved by the principal. Every area of government funds and school activity funds should have strong internal controls. With just the right pressure or opportunity, fraud can take place as we see from the examples above