Background:
To maintain the segregation of duties (SoD) within the Accounts Payable (AP) department, an AP assistant initially creates the supplier payment proposal. This proposal is then verified and approved by a higher-ranking member of the AP department, such as the AP lead. Following this approval, the supplier payment order is generated either by the AP assistant or another AP team member.
Issue:
<< this question was raised by the auditors >>
When a supplier payment proposal is created, you can see the Creation Date and the User who created it but it does not capture the same information when you Acknowledge it. It’s not available on the database level as well. Further as you know supplier payment proposal gets cleared off when you create a supplier payment order and you will not find Acknowledger and Acknowledged Date there also. finally you will not find who acknowledged and when it was done?
When a supplier payment proposal is created, it records the Creation Date and the User who created it. However, the same information is not captured when the proposal is acknowledged. This data is not available at the database level either. Additionally, since the supplier payment proposal is cleared when a supplier payment order is created, the details of who acknowledged it and when are lost. Consequently, it is impossible to determine who acknowledged the proposal and when it was done on a later date.
Proposal:
Given that most supplier payment formats, such as ISO20022, support payment file traceability and that supplier payment orders originate from supplier payment proposals, I suggest adding the details of the Acknowledger and Acknowledged Date to the Payment File Trace Information. Of course, this would necessitate some modifications to the current design
While enabling history logging is a viable option, it can lead to performance issues since it logs various other changes within IFS.