With the implementation of Workday in July 2025, the policy compliance audit function for Expenses (including purchasing card, shared liability, and personal card transactions) will be carried out by the Division of Business Services central audit pool. The central audit team is currently being built up in preparation for Workday and select divisions have been invited to join central audit for expenses prior to Workday go-live.
Explaining Centralized Audit of Expenses
The University of Wisconsin–Madison historically structured expense approvals to be decentralized, with approval roles localized to departments and divisions. Workday Expense has been designed with a centralized model of compliance review, where all expense reports for the institution will route to the specialized central audit policy compliance team first in the expenses approval workflow. Reports will still route to unit approvers for budget and funding review after the policy compliance approval step is complete.
Benefits of the Centralized Audit Model for Workday
Greater consistency in audit reviews: A dedicated team of auditors will ensure that expense reports are reviewed uniformly, providing fair and consistent application of university policies.
Increased efficiency in time to approval: By centralizing the audit function, we anticipate faster turnaround times for expense report approvals, reducing delays and time to payment.
Enhanced standardization: A centralized approach will ensure university-wide standards and compliance requirements are adhered to more rigorously across all divisions.
Advanced preparation for Workday: Joining centralized audit early will allow units to test operational models prior to Workday go-live, ensuring units are fully prepared for Workday Expense in July 2025.
How the Centralized Audit process works
There are at a minimum two levels of required approvals for expense reports in Workday. First, the Division of Business Services Expense Partners review—and revise, if necessary—for policy compliance. Approved expense reports are then routed to the Grant/Gift/Program/Project driver worktag manager approvers for budget and funding review.
For Divisions onboarding to central audit prior to Workday go-live, campus policy compliance auditors may be added either to the approver role or the auditor role in the Shared Financial System (SFS). We can model this Workday workflow in SFS by having expense reports route first to the Division of Business Services central audit pool at the approver level (Expense Managers) and then back to department/Divisional auditors (Prepay Auditors) for budget and funding review.
Central Audit Team
Roles and responsibilities of the team
- Financial transaction policy compliance audit
- University of Wisconsin Foundation billing audit
- Direct report expense report audit
Meet the team
Centralized Audit Participants and Processing Statistics
To date, the following units have been onboarded to centralized audit for expenses:
- School of Medicine and Public Health
- School of Nursing
- School of Pharmacy
- Nelson Institute
- College of Letters and Science
- School of Veterinary Medicine
- Division of Continuing Studies
- College of Agricultural and Life Sciences
- Wisconsin Union
- Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research
- Chancellor’s Office supported units
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Common questions about the centralized audit process.
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What does a policy compliance audit consist of?
The policy compliance audit consists of business purpose review, data entry validation, and policy compliance review. Auditors are looking to confirm a business purpose cites a benefit to UW (research, teaching, outreach, or other mission-driven activity). Auditors will validate that expenses entered match receipts and supporting documentation (e.g., dates, dollar amounts, expense types). Auditors will ensure that each expense meets the criteria for reimbursement as set forth in the relevant UW-Madison policy.
Who will an auditor reach out to if there are questions on a report?
If there are questions on an expense report, the campus auditor will reach out to the alternate or claimant directly via email and will cc the approver, if applicable.
When will auditors send back reports?
Central campus auditors will make every effort to keep workflow moving forward to ensure prompt payment. Having said that, there are certain situations where expense report sendbacks may occur.
An expense report will be sent back to the claimant/alternate if:
- There are three or more issues with an expense report (for example, a report has an insufficient business purpose, missing receipt, and missing agenda).
- If three or more issues are found, then the auditor will send back the report with instructions to resolve/fix the items, rather than emailing the claimant or alternate and fixing/adding items themselves.
- This is done to emphasize the educational aspect of the send-back function, where the claimant or alternate has the opportunity to then learn from mistakes and omissions, fix them, and resubmit.
- There are expenses claimed that do not comply with policy that require an exception from the Divisional Business Office to pay/reimburse
- Report will be sent back with instructions to remove expenses or obtain a Divisional exception, attach the approval to the report and resubmit
- 10 or more days have elapsed without a response from the claimant/alternate regarding outstanding questions on the expense report.
- Expenses are claimed that require an updated remote work agreement to validate the headquarters location and an updated remote work agreement is not on file.
Contact information
Claimants, alternates, and departments may send questions on expense reports in process with the central audit team to the central auditor inbox expensepartnerpool@bussvc.wisc.edu.
To learn more about central audit for expenses, including how your Division can migrate to central audit prior to Workday go-live, reach out to Expense Reimbursement Program Manager Allie Watters at allie.watters@wisc.edu.