Court of Audit report

State of Carinthia paid 31 invoices twice!

800 invoices were randomly scrutinized by the State Court of Audit - conclusion: invoices were paid twice or too late, digitalization also leaves something to be desired.

As usual, the Carinthian State Court of Audit subjected the 2023 financial statements to a detailed audit: "It took 800 random samples and checked, among other things, whether the state correctly recorded receipts, adhered to payment deadlines and whether the internal control system worked in these cases," according to the institution.

The auditors divided the deficiencies found into three groups: Deficiencies affecting the financial statements, deficiencies in the internal control system and other deficiencies. While the financial statements were only affected in 14 cases, more than half (407 out of 800) had other deficiencies. These include, for example, missing receipt notes, unfulfilled invoice characteristics or failure to meet payment deadlines.

292 invoices paid too late
Of the 800 invoices, 652 were incoming invoices (i.e. the state had to pay): "The State Court of Auditors found that the state had exceeded the payment deadline for 292 of 652 incoming invoices (44.8 percent)," according to the ruling. Incidentally, this was due to the fact that the departments forwarded the payment orders to the financial accounting department too late: "Comprehensive use of digital payment processing would reduce errors and shorten the processing time for documents," says Director Günter Bauer. 

Speaking of digitalization: companies have the option of sending e-invoices to the state via the federal government's company service portal. Otherwise, invoices are received by the state by post in paper form. Of the 800 samples checked, only 147 receipts (18.4 percent) were e-invoices. "We recommend the mandatory transmission of e-invoices to the state. The federal government has already had this obligation since 2014," says Günter Bauer, Director of the State Court of Audit. This would speed up administrative processes and improve transparency.

Over 25,000 euros paid twice
However, the state not only paid invoices too late (but used the cash discount deduction in 21 out of 32 cases), but receivables were also paid twice: "The review of all payments made by the state in 2023 revealed 31 double payments totaling 25,379.35 euros," the report states. At least the majority of these have already been reimbursed - around 7,000 euros are still outstanding.