SEMINAR HANDOUT

Using Reports to Audit Your System

Using Reports to Audit Your System

Prepared for ASCnet

Applied Systems Client Network 2340 S. River Road, #311 Des Plaines, IL 60018 Phone: 224-220-1444 Fax: 224-220-1443
Copyright 2010 by Applied Systems Client Network, Inc. (ASCnet), 2340 S. River Road #311, Des Plaines, IL 60018. Protection claimed in all forms and matters of copyrightable material and information now allowed by law or hereafter granted including both electronic and conventional distribution of herein products. Reproduction or transmission unless authorized by ASCnet is prohibited. All rights reserved. Specific product information regarding Applied Systems The Agency Manager and Vision, as well as other products copyrighted and mentioned within (ex: Microsoft, Excel, etc.) are the product of the individual company and no endorsement or ownership of product should be implied by its mention and use. All workflows are suggested and common workflows. Users of this material agree that ASCnet cannot be held liable for any omissions or errors within the guide.

Original Author:
Laura Nelson LRN Consulting Services, LLC August, 2008

Updated By:
Laura Nelson LRN Consulting Services, LLC September, 2009

Target Audience:
X Accountant/Bookkeeper CSR Carrier IT Manager/Systems Coordinator Operations Principal/Owner Producer Trainer Vendor ALL Other: Administrative

X X

Seminar Type: Training & Staff Development

Seminar Level: Intermediate: An Intermediate level class takes the concepts originated from a basic level course, and adds more layers or parallel concepts. For functional courses, these classes will require the participant or attendee to have some basis to work from as they are learning new facets of the agency management system or software program.

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Using Reports to Audit Your System

Class Description: Reports are the backbone of any agency. Reports let you know not only how your agency is doing, but in what direction it is going. They will also tell you if your data is correct and how your staff is doing. This session will discuss a few ways reports will help audit your system to make sure your information has integrity and what is going on in your agency. Learning Outcomes: Identify what reports can be used to audit system Examine and be able to assess database for accuracy Create User Reports to be run on a regular basis for auditing Assumptions: This seminar is based on the following TAM Version 10.3 Microsoft Word Version 2007

Table of Contents

Using the Book of Business Report ...................................................................................... 4 Finding missing CSR or Producer ..................................................................................... 4 Finding Incorrect Status Codes ......................................................................................... 6 Finding policies that have expired but have current status codes ..................................... 6 Finding Incorrect Policy Types .......................................................................................... 7 Finding Missing Commission Percentage or Amount ........................................................ 7 Using the Date First Written to audit new screens that were entered on the computer ..... 7 Using Expiration Reports to Audit System ............................................................................ 8 Finding policies that are cancelled but have future expiration dates ................................. 8 Finding policies with Zero or Minus Premiums .................................................................. 9 Finding Policy Numbers that are Blank, or have other wording such as TBD:................... 9 Accounting Reports to audit your system............................................................................ 10 Aged Receivables: Mode - J/E Between item Accounts .................................................. 10 Unapplied Cash Report ................................................................................................... 10

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Using Reports to Audit Your System

Using the Book of Business Report

The Book of Business Report can also be called a Billing Screen Report. The information on a Book of Business Report comes directly from the Billing Screen. This report can be used for many things besides getting your book of business. The following are some ways to use this report.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Finding missing CSRs or Producers Finding incorrect status codes Finding incorrect policy types Finding missing commissions Using the Date First Written to audit new screens that were entered on the computer.

Finding missing CSR or Producer

Reports, Management, Book of Business

Book of Business for current business using agency normal criteria with the following extra criteria: September, 2009
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Using Reports to Audit Your System

Policy.csr = for missing CSRs or Policy.pr = for missing Producer

Note: There are 3 blank spaces between the quotations.

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Using Reports to Audit Your System

Finding Incorrect Status Codes

Run a Current Book of Business Report in Summary and sort by Status Code. Exclude status codes that your agency currently uses. If there are incorrect status codes on the report, rerun the report in Complete and choose only those status codes in the criteria under Policy Status that are incorrect. This will then list the clients policies that need to be corrected. I chose to exclude any expiration prior to Jan 1 2009, so I am looking at current data only. If I want to include old billing screens, then say All Expirations under Expiration Date.

Finding policies that have expired but have current status codes
This is a very important report to run since it will tell you two important things. First and most important, missed expirations and second, policies that have expired and status codes that have not been updated on the system. Run an Expiration Report for past dates. Run this report using the same criteria your agency uses for actual expiration reports except change the expiration dates to past dates. The dates can be as far back as you want in order to clean up the data. My suggestion would be as least one year prior to the current date. Remember to use current status codes but past dates.

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Using Reports to Audit Your System

Finding Incorrect Policy Types

Run the same report as above and sort by Policy Type. If there are incorrect policy types, rerun the report in Complete and choose only those Policy Types that are incorrect. This will list those policies that need to be corrected.

Finding Missing Commission Percentage or Amount

Run a Current Book of Business Report using a Output as Complete and the following extra criteria:

1. For zero commission amount: Policy.co_amt = 0 2. For zero commission percentage: Policy.com_p = 0 If you only want screen one in your report, then add the following after each of the above: AND SUBSTR(Policy.pol_idx,11,2)="01"

Using the Date First Written to audit new screens that were entered on the computer
Depending on how your agency uses the First Date Written Box on the billing screen, a Book of Business Report can be run using specified First Date Written with every other criteria set to ALL and sort by CSR or Operator ID. This will give you all new billing screens that were put on the computer during a specified time period. It will give you the opportunity to monitor billing screens as they are being input on the computer for accuracy. See criteria below:

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Using Reports to Audit Your System

Choose the dates you want to Audit

Using Expiration Reports to Audit System

The Expiration Report can also used to audit the billing screens. The information on an Expiration Report comes directly from the Billing Screen. When the Billing Screen has a Zero Premium, it does not appear on the Book of Business Report. By using the Expiration Report to find incorrect billing screens that have zero premiums, this will give you better integrity in your reports.

Finding policies that are cancelled but have future expiration dates
Expiration Report using cancelled status codes but future months. This happens when policies are cancelled the status codes are changed but the expiration was not changed to the cancelled date. Run the Expiration Report for future dates but cancelled status codes.

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Using Reports to Audit Your System

Finding policies with Zero or Minus Premiums

Expiration Report for all current policies. In the criteria under Risks Per Policy, Pick One Risk Per Policy. If you use the first screen only to enter the premiums and all subscreens are 0, use the following extra criteria: Policy.prem<1 and SUBSTR(Policy.pol_idx,11,2) = "01" If you use the subscreens to enter premiums and not screen one, then you can use this extra criteria: Policy.prem < 1 and SUBSTR(Policy.pol_idx,11,2) <> 01

Finding Policy Numbers that are Blank, or have other wording such as TBD:
Run a current Book of Business Report in complete, sort by CSR or PR. To find the blank policies you need to know that the policy number field is the pol under fields and has 25 spaces. To use this extra criteria to find blank policies numbers: Policy.pol=

There are 25 blank spaces between the quotation marks. To find policy numbers that say TBD or Application, you could use Policy.pol=TBD or Policy.pol=APPLICATION Please note that the above two extra criteria have the items within the quotations as all capital letters. This is because the format of the policy number field is capital letters when alpha text is used.

NOTES:

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Using Reports to Audit Your System

Accounting Reports to audit your system

There are two reports that should be run on a regular basis to clean up your system: 1. Running the Aged Receivables Report in J/E Between Item Account Mode to find invoices that need to have debits and credits applied and have a zero balance. 2. Running the Unapplied Cash report to find money on account that might need to be sent out for direct bill, or invoiced.

Aged Receivables: Mode - J/E Between item Accounts

Reports, Accounting, Aged Receivables. Under criteria, the first criteria should be set to J/E Between Item Accounts. Dont change any of the other criteria set by the computer. This will find invoices that need to have debits and credits applied and have a zero balance. Run this report before running the Unapplied Cash Report.

Unapplied Cash Report

This report, under Reports, Accounting, Unapplied Cash, should be run often depending on the size of your agency. Some agencies run daily or weekly, but I would suggest a minimum of monthly. It will find money on account that needs to have something done with it. This will give you a report of all monies that were for payments, advances and return checks by clients that do not have something applied to it. This is for deposits or checks only and will not include credit transactions such as minus endorsements or return audits. This is very good to find money that might have been posted but should have been sent out for a direct bill policy or uploaded and agency bill that still does not have an invoice or an advance sent without collecting the money.

NOTES:

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