Causes of rejected payment requests in the prevalidation system of the Marine Corps' accounting system and recommendation for their elimination

Abstract

On July 1, 1995, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service fielded the On-line Prevalidation System for processing vendor payment requests. Its purpose was to prevent new Negative Unliquidated Obligation and Unmatched Disbursements records by comparing disbursement requests to obligations prior to payment. The Objectives of this thesis were to determine the causes of rejected payment requests by analyzing sample data drawn from Marine Corps Forces, Atlantic's Operations and Maintenance appropriation and to recommend ways to improve the prevalidation process so that obligation validation is more efficient and effective. Research included an investigation into the background of the prevalidation system and an analysis of UMDs and NULOs before and after the implementation of the OPV System. Seven causes of rejected payment requests were identified, along with the penalty interest charged as a result of document numbers remaining on the Rejected Payment Authorization Request Report. It was observed that the formation of new UMDs and NULOs has decreased as a result of OPV's implementation. While the disbursements that are prevalidated generally do not result in problem disbursements, only a portion of all disbursements is prevalidated. Lowering thresholds at which disbursements must be prevalidated and expanding the types of payments that are subject to prevalidation will improve the credibility of DoD financial management and further decrease problem disbursement levels.