FOI REF: FOI-2023-1291
You asked
Expenses
What finance system do you use?
What system do you use to manage and process your staff’s expenses?
What is the expense process?
How many expense claims were made in FY22/23? And what was total value of expense claimed in FY22/223?
Can you submit expenses remotely?
How are you claiming VAT on mileage? Do your staff have to deduct commute from mileage?
What percentage of expense claims are you auditing?
Which department is responsible for managing the expense process?
Do you have full autonomy for managing your organisation’s expense policy and process? If not, which organisation oversees this?
How many FTEs (full time employees) do you have processing expense claims?
What is the average time to reimburse your staff’s expenses?
How are you reporting on expense spend, PSA expense types and scope 3 emissions reporting?
Invoices
What system do you use for managing/processing invoices?
What is your current invoice process for handling supplier invoices, from receipt to when it is posted in the ERP/finance system and ready for payment?
How many invoices were processed in FY22/23?
How many FTEs (full time employees) do you have in your accounts payable team who process invoices?
What percentage of invoices were paid late in FY22/23?
Do you use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to scan invoices?
Do you have to manually validate the scanned invoices from the OCR capture?
Do you currently have a PO system or a non-PO system? If you use both types – what is the percentage of PO invoices vs. non-PO invoices?
Are you claiming VAT on invoices? If so, are you doing this in-house?
How are you currently reporting on invoice spend?
We said
Thank you for your request. Please see the following answers to your questions.
Expenses
Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications
Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications
Claims are submitted for Line Manager approval via designated expenses area of system. Line Manager receives system notification of claim pending approval and takes relevant action. Unpaid, approved claims uploaded daily to payables function and payment processed.
36,440 Claims were processed at a total value of £1,596,379.03 during the financial year 2022/23.
Yes, but only on official ONS devices.
We do not reclaim VAT on mileage claims and staff do have to deduct their normal commute from mileage claims.
Our Finance team carry out an audit on a sample of claims that are randomly selected each month, which can vary in terms of scope and scale.
The Office for National Statistics Finance Division
Yes, we have full autonomy.
The processing of expense claims requires one member of the Finance team, working an estimated one hour per week. The process is carried out daily over a 5-day working week. This equates to 0.03 FTE.
Recipients receive reimbursement 4 working days following Line Manager approval.
Reports and Analytics tool in Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications is utilised to extract the data for these requirements.
Invoices
Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications.
Invoices are entered on to the Accounts Payable ledger system within 48 Hours of being received. Invoices that are fully matched to a purchase order and receipted or have been allocated off-system approval, will be paid within 5 working days of being received.
14,490 supplier invoices were processed during the financial year 2022/23.
4 FTE employees carry out invoice entry and 1 FTE employee processes the payment of those invoices within the Accounts Payable team.
Please see link to payment performance publication: Prompt payment to suppliers - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)
No
N/A
Both PO and non-PO systems are in place with 95% of invoices matched to a PO and 5% relating to non-PO during the financial year 2022/23.
Yes, this is performed in-house, either at point of invoice entry or via a monthly review exercise.
Reports and Analytics tool in Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications is utilised to extract the data required to fulfil our reporting obligations.