Council presses finance on PO reporting after $445,750 in Madden payments; staff says PO totals differ from paid amounts

Council members raised concerns that the PO report shows many lines for a single supplier (Madden), creating the appearance of very large commitments. "If you add up Madden's total for this period ... the numbers become $430,000," a council member said, asking how much has actually been paid.

Finance staff answered that a purchase order (PO) is an approval to purchase and that the PO total does not always equal amounts already paid. Staff reported that payments to Madden this year total $445,750.47 and explained timing differences (for example, December deliveries may be billed in January). "That's the payments that were made to Madden this year," staff said.

Staff demonstrated how the parish accounting software shows multi-line POs and why some reports duplicate PO totals rather than showing spent-to-date on each PO. The clerk said an individual PO report can show how much has been expended on that PO, but the standard PO-listing report available to the council does not include an aggregated spent-to-date column across many POs; pulling each PO's expenditure requires running separate reports or requesting a tailored export from the finance office.

On vendor-management processes, staff described monthly PO procedures for road aggregate (road "SB2" orders and variable monthly tonnage), the use of blanket POs for recurring small purchases, and the parish's policy that single items over $200 require a separate PO. Council members requested that finance produce a clear, consolidated report showing paid amounts to vendors for the year and the amount remaining on each PO.

What happens next: Finance staff offered to run vendor-paid reports and to help the council craft precise queries for the data they want; they also advised that some vendor questions about why certain tonnage was ordered should be directed to highway operations rather than finance.