Eliminating Unmatched Disbursements. A Combined Approach.
Abstract
The Deputy Secretary of Defense directed the establishment of a working group to develop a course of action to alleviate the systemic problem of unmatched disbursements (UMDs). Under the guidance of the Acquisition and Financial Management Panel, co-chaired by the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) and the Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition and Technology), the Acquisition and Financial Management Working Group was chartered for that purpose. An unmatched disbursement is any disbursement received by an accounting office that cannot be accurately matched to the correct obligation record. As of June 30, 1993, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) reported $19 billion in unmatched disbursements. Contract payments made up the majority of the dollar value of unmatched disbursements. Today's acquisition process is dependent on hard copy documents that are distributed and repetitively entered into multiple systems. Observation and experience indicate that a significant number of unmatched disbursements are caused by inaccurate or incomplete data within the different systems, resulting in payments charged to the wrong lines of accounting. Data entry errors and the lack of timely distribution of contract documents among program managers, contracting offices, coritract administration offices, payment offices, and accounting offices are the major contributors to unmatched disbursements. Other contributing factors are a high percentage of payments which must be manually processed, non-uniform contract structure and format, use of multiple funding sources for a single contract line item, complex progress payment procedures, and the lack of standard automated systems.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 1995
- Accession Number
- ADA296459
Entities
Organizations
- United States Department of Defense