FOI release

Freedom of Information request (FOI 22/862)

Published 17 January 2024

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FOI 22/862

21st August 2022

Dear

Thank you for your request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Please see the information requested, see below.

  1. What finance system do you use?

Oracle Fusion

  1. What system do you use to manage and process your staff’s expenses?

Oracle Fusion

  1. What is the expense process?

Incurred

Claimed

Approved

Audited

Paid

Accounted

  1. What is the current period of reimbursement for staff expenses?

Up to one month. (Everything approved by 21st each month is paid at end of month)

  1. Are expenses required to be pre-approved?

Some are: Hotels over £100 (outside London), £140 in London. All flights

  1. What is the current approval workflow for expense claims?

Approval follows line management hierarchy in line with approval limits

  1. How long does it take on average to process 1 expense claim?

6 mins

  1. How many expense claims were made in FY21/22? And what was total value of expense claimed in FY21/22?

970 claims £150,186.69

  1. Can your staff submit expenses remotely?

Yes

  1. Are staff able to submit claims on their mobile device?

No

  1. How are you claiming VAT on mileage? Do your staff have to deduct commute from mileage manually?

Manual

  1. What percentage of expense claims are you auditing?

10% of all claims over £100, plus non-compliant items (e.g.no receipts)

  1. How many FTEs (full time employees) do you have processing expense claims?

Three (Expenses are processed by the Accounts Payable team)

  1. What is the average time to reimburse your staff’s expenses?

30 days

  1. Which department oversees / owns the expense processes/workflows?

Finance Operations

  1. Who is the named contact within the organisation who owns the expense process?

Head of Finance Operations

  1. Are there direct data integrations for expense spend directly into your main finance system? Alternatively, are they bulk uploaded via JPEG etc.?

No. Journal updates are completed

Invoices:

  1. What system do you use for managing/processing invoices?

Oracle Fusion

  1. What is your current invoice process for handling supplier invoices, from receipt to when it is posted in the ERP/finance system and ready for payment?

PDF saved and named for supplier

Match to receipted PO

Awaiting payment ( AP creditors)

Paid

AP month end process into GL

  1. How many invoices were processed in FY21/22?

15,695

  1. How many FTEs (full time employees) do you have in your accounts payable team who process invoices?

3 ( also incorporates Expenses processing)

  1. What percentage of invoices were paid late in FY21/22?

6%

  1. Are there cases where Invoices are duplicated and paid out more than once?

No

  1. What is the approval workflow for Invoices?

Requisition (approval) to PO

PO receipted on delivery of goods/services

Invoice matched to receipted PO

Invoice paid

  1. Who is the named contact within the organiPO sation that decides which systems are upgraded each year?

Corporate Executive Team

  1. Do you use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to scan invoices?

No

  1. Do you have to manually validate the scanned invoices from the OCR capture?

N/A

  1. Do you currently have a PO system or a non-PO system? If you use both types – what is the percentage of PO invoices vs. non-PO invoices?

PO system

  1. Are you claiming VAT on invoices? If so, how are you doing this in-house?

Yes. VAT returns completed by the accounting team

If you disagree with how we have interpreted the Freedom of Information Act 2000 with regards to your request, you can ask for the decision to be reviewed. The review will be carried out by a senior member of the Agency who was not involved with the original decision.

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Yours sincerely

MHRA Customer Experience Centre

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