Auditor General report a damning indictment on Novopay

A new report by the Auditor General is a damning indictment on the effect the pay roll system Novopay has had on our school sector, Labour’s Education spokesperson Chris Hipkins says.

“Novopay added more than $1.5 million to the costs of auditing the school accounts last year and delayed the process by several months.

“Complications caused by Novopay meant only about a third of the school audits were completed by the May 31 deadline. That was down from 95 per cent in the previous year.

“Auditor General Lyn Provost said her office couldn’t rely on the data it received to the same extent it could in the past, because data uploaded to the Novopay service centre was not reviewed independently.

“The report also found the auditing process was significantly harder because new errors were being generated every pay period. The Auditor General has also warned the security of Novopay data needs to be improved.

“Minister Responsible for Novopay Steven Joyce promised at the beginning of last year he would fix the trouble-plagued system in a matter of months.

“It has now been 15 months and schools are still struggling to cope with ongoing systems issues.

“It is adding costs, time and stress to the work of schools whose main focus should be teaching our kids, not balancing the books,” Chris Hipkins says.

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