Efforts to Minimize Improper Payments for the Shipment of Household Goods Were Generally Effective But Needed Improvement

Abstract

We determined whether the Department's efforts to minimize, identify, report, and recover improper payments on the shipment of household goods were sufficient, effective, and in compliance with applicable laws and regulations. U.S. Transportation Command officials were taking action to minimize the number of overpayments made on the shipment of household goods by implementing the Defense Personal Property System. However, for the period July 2010 through March 2012, General Services Administration (GSA) post-payment audits identified 15,081 automated invoices and 1,313 paper invoices with potential overpayments that DoD had not detected. The Surface Deployment and Distribution Command (SDDC) and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) did not obtain information from GSA that could assist in identifying and preventing the improper payments. SDDC did not make system change requests to detect payment errors such as statute of limitations violations, duplicate payments, and inaccurate shipping weights. DFAS did not report the overpayments as required by improper payment guidance. As a result, DoD lost use of $4.6 million of overpayments, and DFAS underreported the number of improper payments. DFAS identified that 142,636 of 229,411 processed line items contained accounting errors related to shipments of household goods during FY 2012. DFAS accounting technicians manually corrected the errors at a cost of about $2.6 million to the Military Departments and Defense Agencies. The accounting errors occurred primarily because DoD shipment counselors entered invalid accounting data into the Defense Personal Property System. If the Department made needed improvements to prevent accounting errors within the first year of the 6-year Future Years Defense Program, $13 million of costs can be saved over the remaining 5 years.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 15, 2013
Accession Number
ADA580065

Entities

People

  • Lorin T. Venable

Organizations

  • Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Defense

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Accounting
  • Best Practices
  • Business Administration
  • Colorado
  • Contractors
  • Contracts
  • Data Processing
  • Department Of Defense
  • Families (Human)
  • Finance
  • Household Goods
  • Office Personnel
  • Puget Sound
  • Statistical Samples
  • Training
  • United States
  • United States Transportation Command

Readers

  • Defense Financial Management and Audit.
  • Logistics and Supply Chain Management.