Upon graduating from college in 1994, my first job was at a three hundred bed hospital specializing in cardiac care and open heart surgery. This hospital was a facility owned by a large corporation at the time and later in 2000 was acquired by near by hospital which was a not-for-profit hospital in Miami Beach, Florida. In my role as Staff Accountant, I became very familiar with the accounts payable cycle because I managed the accounts payable department. The department included an accounts payable supervisor, two accounts payable processing clerks and an accounts payable filing clerk. The work for the accounts payable clerks was divided alphabetically with clerk number one handling letters A through L and clerk number two handling letters M through Z and rotated randomly. The supervisor was responsible for matching purchase orders and receiving slips, when applicable, with invoices and ensuring that adequate signatures were on invoices and authorized purchasing amounts were no exceeded. The supervisor also prepared the monthly accrual for accounts payable to capture all liabilities not entered in the accounts payable program module by the end of the month, maintained the accounts payable master file and resolved vendor problems involving non-payment of invoices as well as preparing daily reports by cost center and general ledger account for me to review for reclassifications of miscoded invoices such as expensed items that should have been capitalized or vice versa and processing IRS Form 1099's at yearend.
             The hospital's account payable cycle was very well organized and had great strengths in internal control as they related to this cycle. First, there was very good documentation. An organizational chart existed defining the responsible department head and the authorized amount for which they could approve invoices and this chart was part of the accounts payable clerk's reference sheets. T
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