Oa No. 19 - Batching And Reconciliation Of Accounts.

COMCARE OPERATIONAL ADVICE NO 19

BATCHING AND RECONCILIATION OF ACCOUNTS.

Branch Heads

State Commissioners

Majors

State Executive Officers

The attached procedures for the batching and reconciliation of medical and travel accounts have been re‑written in accordance with the latest software update. These procedures should replace Section 5.4 in the Compense Clerical Procedures Manual.

These procedures must be followed in all state offices. Corporate Service Administration Officers and Assistant State Commissioners should note paragraphs 13 to 22 in particular.

Failure to follow these procedures will not only compromise Comcare's financial and audit responsibilities but could also serve to obscure or conceal any deficiencies in the computer programs associated with the payment of medical and travel service provider based payments.

Recent problems balancing the pay run in the Melbourne Office did in fact reveal a deficiency in the software under certain circumstances. This would have gone undetected if balancing procedures had not been followed.

It should also be noted that items listed on the Error Log must be corrected as soon as possible. Failure to correct those errors will only result in extended delays in the payment of those accounts.

Any enquiries regarding the above procedures should be directed to the Benefits Payments Team in Canberra.

SUE HAMILTON

First Assistant Commissioner

13 March 1989

5.4 BATCHING & RECONCILIATION

1.As we are now responsible for the payment of Medical and Travel expenses, and we no longer return accounts to the Agencies, it is essential that accounts are stored in a way that makes them easy to find and easy to cross-check the amount determined. This forms an important part of our audit and quality control.

2.For these reasons accounts need to be batched (with a covering sheet), then totalled and compared to a printout of amount determined EVERY MORNING before any other work is done. THE ONLY EXCEPTION TO THIS IS ON THE DAY OF THE PAYMENT RUN (usually the Wednesday of pay week). ON THAT AFTERNOON PROCESSING of medical/travel claims MUST CEASE BY 4.00PM and BATCHING AND RECONCILIATION will need to be done BEFORE CLOSE OF BUSINESS. This is necessary to ensure that any resulting changes to COMPENSE are done before the details are extracted for the payment run.

3.Medical/Travel Accounts are to be batched by Date of Determination. The Batch No. should be in the form DDMMYY (ie 25 October 1988 would be Batch No. 251088)

4.Batches should be organised by User within Claims Team. Each user should total his/her own accounts. It may be necessary to have more than one batch for each user, depending on how many claims have been processed. The batches are to be arranged by Claim No.

5.Along with the Batch No. and the Claims Team, the total of the Amount Determined within the batch must be totalled by calculator and the $ total and the number of items (ie. individual dates of treatment as opposed to accounts) noted on the covering sheet as the PHYSICAL ACCOUNTS STRIP LIST TOTAL. This is necessary because a Daily Batch Report will be produced for each User showing the $ total as well as the number of items on COMPENSE of ALL accounts determined each day. These totals should match. If they don't, it means that either an account has been determined incorrectly, or the batches have been totalled incorrectly. The necessary corrections should be made to either the strip list of physical accounts or to COMPENSE and recorded appropriately on the Batch Cover Sheet.

6.Each report should be stored with the batches to which it relates.

7.it is the responsibility of each Team Leader to ensure that batching and reconciliation are performed correctly (and on a DAILY basis) within their team. Accordingly, Team Leaders should sign and date the reconciliation report against the notation "Checked and Correct".

8.Each Team Leader must advise the Corporate Services Administration Officer of the reconciled total for their Team by use of a Daily Team Batch Totals Sheet. This must be done EACH DAY.

BENEFITS PAYMENT TEAM

UNDETERMINED MEDICAL REPORTS

STATE: ............... BATCH NO: ...............

(Corporate Services Admin Officer)