Hi
Thanks for the full response and helpful steer.
The problem narrows a little, in that this particular entity accounts on a cash basis, using a "month 13" to mop up payments issued in-year but cashed after the year end. There's no accounts payable, or at least in any form we'd recognise. So the audit test is to ensure that payments recorded in the books have indeed been paid, and (I'd need to confirm this) that it was paid to the right person for the services or goods provided. The Audit Office have been requiring audited agencies to obtain individual receipts from suppliers for payments made, even though there'll already be a string of prior evidence starting with intention to spend, requisition or earmarking of funds, supplies order, supplier invoice, goods received note, payment request, payment order and banking records (there's an enormously long chain of procedures and paperwork, including pre-audit, before a payment is issued).
I'll be able to explore this in a little more detail when I carry out my next mission there, to understand if I'm missing something about what the auditors are trying to achieve. My guess is that this is a hangover from the days before the government introduced a modern IFMIS, when a manually-generated payment order could end up anywhere. Just to give you an idea of how bad things were then, government always had to pay in advance for goods because suppliers got fed up with never receiving payment for goods they'd supplied. These things are changing slowly, and for the better, now that the IFMIS is operational.
Best regards