Audit of Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office Payroll
Scope
The scope of the audit was from September 1, 2021, to August 31, 2022.
Objectives
The audit objectives were to provide reasonable assurance that the internal controls in place are adequate and effective and that the payroll processes comply with all applicable fiscal ordinances, policies, and procedures. Areas of audit focus included the processes and procedures for the following:
- Onboarding of new employees
- Timekeeping
- Special allowances paid through payroll
- Overtime and compensatory time
- Reconciliations of payroll time and expenditures
- Offboarding of terminated employees
Report Highlights
Background Check Not Conducted
All Sheriff's Office employees were required to undergo a thorough background check. In addition, sworn employees' background checks were followed up by a background interview by a board consisting of Sheriff's Office staff. We selected 38 new hires, 22 sworn employees and 16 civilians, to determine whether the appropriate background checks were completed. All sworn staff sampled had undergone the background interview and background check. However, we noted one civilian employee (3%) did not have a background check on file.
Timecard Edits not Documented
We selected a random sample of 43 employees to determine whether employees entered their own time, and where edits or corrections were needed, those changes were communicated back to the employee. We found that:
- Five out of the 43 (12%) employees did not have any entries or changes to their timecard by someone else and therefore no further testing was done.
- For the remaining 38 employees we found that 21 (55%) employees had 160 (22%) edits that impacted employee hours worked, pay, or leave time balances. However, management did not always maintain documentation supporting the entries and did not document whether the employee was notified.
Payment Miscalculations
We found that one out of 51 (2%) Sheriff's Office employees sampled had mistakenly received additional Acting in Position pay for approximately nine months. Sheriff's Office payroll staff discovered the error independently of our audit during a review of additional pay amounts and worked with MFA and the employee to recoup the extra pay. Repayment of the $6,432 received in error was completed by May 2022. Additionally, in an agency test of controls over retroactive payroll payments (retro payments), we discovered a miscalculation in a correction of payrate for one out of nine (11%) payments. The risk of errors can be mitigated when procedures are documented and key controls, such as required documentation and independent review and approval, are in place.
