BAGUIO CITY – The City Accounting Office pointed out it will only process requests for payment of projects and services that have complete documents based on submissions done by the transacting public, including other similarly situated offices in the local government.
City Accountant Antonio L. Tabin disclosed there are only 3 available auditors in his office tasked to audit over 12,000 vouchers for the payment of projects and services.
He reported the most common problem met by their office in the processing the payment of projects and services by the local government is the incomplete documents submitted by requesting parties, including similarly situated offices of the local government, thus their office cannot be blamed for the delays in the settlement of the obligations of the city.
“We assure the public there will be no delays in the processing of the payment of projects and services if the documents of the requesting parties are complete so as not to burden our existing personnel,” Tabin stressed.
The city accountant assured the transacting public, including other local government offices, that requested payments could be processed by their office within 5 days if all the required documents attached to the vouchers are complete.
However, Tabin explained that if the attached documents of the vouchers are not complete, then the same will be brought back to the requesting party for the completion of the lacking documents before the final processing.
He reminded transacting parties that there is always a huge volume of transactions in their office daily and the only remedy to fastrack their requests for payment of projects and services is to ensure the completeness of the entries in the vouchers and its attachments for the processing to proceed to the next level which will be the preparation of the checks reflecting the payment of the local government for the completed projects and services.
He also urged fellow department heads and their assigned personnel to make sure the vouchers being brought to their office for pre-auditing and accounting procedures should be complete because there are times that even offices of the local government processing payments for availed services and completed projects are not able to submit complete sets of documents that result to unnecessary delays in the said transactions.
Tabin emphasized his office should not be blamed if there are unnecessary delays in the processing of the payment of the procurements done by different local government offices, the completeness of the documents supporting the release of payments should be the responsibility of the procuring office to avoid inconveniences in the processing of their documents and the timely release of payments for whatever obligation of the local government.
The city accounting office is in charge of facilitating the payments of the obligations of the local government to suppliers, contractors among other monetary obligations, but not completing the required documents.
By Dexter A. See