Our objective was to analyse agencies’ accounting general journal entries, and property, plant and equipment transactions, excluding land, to identify potential fraud, errors or omissions, and to identify weak controls that can lead to these outcomes.

We downloaded and analysed more than 12,300 journal transactions and assets from the systems of 6 agencies. Our audit techniques included the matching of data between agency systems, and the interrogation of databases.

We have not disclosed all of our audit tests in this report; however, they included identifying:

For accounting general journal entries:

• patterns of the accounts used by staff, and assessing the reasonableness of those accounts and the validity of transactions posted to seldom used accounts
• journals approved electronically outside the approver’s delegation limit
• inappropriate use of suspense accounts
• unusual debits to revenue accounts
• erroneous duplicate journal entries
• journals with inadequate or no explanation

For property, plant and equipment:

• inappropriate sale of assets to employees
• unreasonable proceeds from the sale of assets
• assets acquired using non approved procedures
• asset acquisitions approved outside delegation limits
• depreciation rates / useful life of assets inconsistent with the agency depreciation policy
• inadequate or inconsistent information in the fixed asset register.

Our testing included all journal transactions at the 6 agencies, totalling $4 billion and assets totalling $965 million. Some audit procedures enabled 100% testing for anomalies, while other tests involved identifying potential anomalies, which we investigated on a sample basis. We audited the agencies listed in Table 1. Journal transactions were tested for the period 1 July 2016 to 30 November 2016. Property, plant and equipment was tested for the period 1 January 2016 to 30 November 2016.