Court official's $1167 alcohol spend under scrutiny

The audit into credit card compliance also found the majority of alcohol-related purchases did not have sufficient evidence of prior approval.

Alcohol purchases and taxi fares were under the microscope in the Australian National Audit Office's report on the Federal Court of Australia's corporate credit card compliance, published in June.

The ANAO conducted "targeted testing" of alcohol-related credit card transactions from 2022-23.

More than $20,000 was spent at alcohol retailers during the financial year, including $12,724 across 29 transactions at Dan Murphy's.

The purchases were for events hosted by the Chief Justice, miscellaneous meetings, workshops or seminars, ceremonial sittings, events for judges, farewells and gifts.

It found 38 of the 42 tested transactions were not supported by sufficient documented evidence of pre-approval, the audit found.

In some cases, cardholders sought verbal pre-approval however the ANAO said it was not adequately documented.

The Federal Court agreed to reinforce the requirement for documented pre-approval through staff refresher training.

It was one of the audit office's six recommendations, which were all agreed to by the Federal Court.

The audit office also found two instances of "purchase splitting", where one transaction is split into multiple charges to avoid exceeding transaction limits.

In one instance of purchase splitting, the cardholder made three transactions at Dan Murphy's in April 2023.

"The sum of the three transactions was $1166.59, which exceeded the cardholder's individual transaction limit of $1000.35," the audit report stated.

"As of April 2024, the three transactions had not been approved in the system, with no evidence of follow-up or escalation occurring with the cardholder or relevant manager."

In another instance, a cardholder spent a total $2,403.51 across two transactions at Slimline Warehouse, a promotional product supplier, exceeding the individual's $2000 purchase limit.

"Purchase splitting increases the risk of intentional misuse and fraudulent activity, as well as limiting traceability and the ability to monitor purchases," the report stated.

The Federal Court agreed to update its policies and procedures to explicitly prohibit purchase splitting.

Analysis of the Federal Court's use of CabCharge taxi payment cards found while transaction limits were adhered to, there were weaknesses in the pre-approval and review processes.

The audit found there was no requirement for cardholders to send receipts to their managers or the finance team as part of the reconciliation process.

"Additionally, there was no documented approval of CabCharge transactions by a manager or travel approver post-travel," the report stated.

While most CabCharge transactions occurred between 7am and 7pm, there were several instances of travel between 9pm and 5am, the audit found.

"While there are potentially legitimate business reasons for taxi travel to occur on weekends and outside of normal business hours, the FCA's lack of appropriate controls over CabCharge cards increases the risk that cards may be used inappropriately," the audit report stated.

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The Federal Court agreed to reinforce pre-approval requirements through staff refresher training and to provide additional guidance on the process of recording receipts.

The audit report found the Federal Court's policy on credit card usage "lacked detail in key areas".

The audit found the Federal Court spent almost $1.17 million across 83 credit cards and 464 CabCharge taxi payment cards in the 2022-23 financial year.

It found eight instances of external credit card fraud and inadvertent personal misuse. No instances of intentional staff misuse were found, the report noted.