22 November 2008
AUT red faces over $3m newspaper print order
2 November 2006
By Ali Bell: Te Waha Nui Online
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Student journalists got a big shock over their purchase order to an Auckland printer for the latest edition of the AUT University training newspaper Te Waha Nui.
The order was for a cool $3.1 million -- plus GST.
When School of Communication Studies manager Kevin Upton saw the extravagant figure, he wrote “bit of a shock” on a copy of the order to Associate Professor David Robie.
“I expected to hear from him pretty quickly,” says Upton.
“David said, ‘You’ve got to be joking’.”
It was no joke – just an accounting blunder.
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Te Waha Nui is produced in fortnightly editions by journalism students with journalism staff David Robie and Allan Lee. It is printed by Horton Media.
This edition of the newspaper had a normal print run of 2000, which costs around $1561 plus GST.
Instead of taking the quote price as the total for the print run, accounts staff had multiplied it as a unit price by 2000. So each copy of the 24-page paper would have cost $1561.
The purchase order sent to Horton Media was more than $3.1 million. Including GST, the order totalled more than $3.5 million.
“It was done by a temp,” says Mel Ambrosio, procurement administrator at AUT’s Finance Division.
Purchasing officer Judy Prior says the temp had failed to check the $3 million figure before sending it through. A worker would normally check such a large figure with senior management.
Prior says: “Kevin Upton called me and joked, ‘Tell me if I should pack my bags and leave right now’.
“I apologised and sent him a chocolate fish in the internal mail.”
If a cheque had been written for $3 million, says Upton, “the class materials account would have increased dramatically overnight”.
But the mistake was discovered and a correct new purchase order sent.
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