Approving officers

Approving officers are responsible for ensuring that journal entry input conforms with ANU policy and accepted accounting practice. Also that staff under their control are adequately trained so that they understand the effect of processing journal entries. Approving officers should ensure that there is a proper separation of duties/functions between those officers initiating a request, processing a request and approval. Unnecessary requests should be rejected and not proceed. Special attention should be given to supporting documentation.

Officers reviewing and approving should:

• be alert to practices that are contrary to these standards and ensure that incorrectly constructed journal entries are amended before they are posted to the ledger; and
• ensure entries conform to ANU policy and procedures and accepted accounting practice.

Officers undertaking review and approval need to have a sound basic understanding of current accounting procedures and practice; and look for patterns in the types of journals being created and if journals are consistently being used to correct misscoding, steps should be taken to ensure correct coding of future transactions.