Close-out Memorandum: Accounting for Business Lines of Operation
July 28, 2016 | Other Audit Correspondence
On March 11, 2015, we initiated an audit of the company’s accounting for business lines of operation. The objective of this audit was to review the effectiveness and efficiency of the company’s financial systems and data supporting the accumulation and allocation of costs for the company’s business lines of operation.
The audit was to also assess whether the company implemented recommendations made by the U.S. Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General (DOT OIG) in a March 27, 2013 report to the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA).1 The DOT OIG reported that the Amtrak Performance Tracking (APT) system directly assigned only 20 percent of the company’s costs to business lines of operation and indirectly allocated the remainder, which reduced the precision of the company’s financial performance reporting. The DOT OIG recommended that FRA work with the company to improve the precision of the company’s financial performance reporting. FRA concurred with the recommendations and worked with the company to implement corrective actions for all of the recommendations.
We are terminating this audit because the company has taken and plans to take additional actions to enhance the APT system. These actions are intended to improve the precision of the company’s financial performance reporting as well as its ability to meet accounting requirements established by the Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act or (FAST Act).
2 We presented our observations, which are summarized below, to your staff on May 17, 2016.