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The Oracle finance machine implemented by Birmingham City Council allocated £2 billion ($2.65 billion) in cash to the wrong financial year, leaving public sector workers to unpick the errors manually.
Europe’s largest native authority has been made successfully bankrupt by a combination of the self-inflicted messy ERP rollout and historic equal pay claims. In its latest file to the council’s Audit Committee, external auditors Grant Thornton disclosed that Oracle’s cloud-primarily based Fusion ERP machine, which has failed to attach auditable accounts since its implementation in 2022, continues to space off disruption to the council’s financial administration and operations.
The auditors chanced on distinguished dangers in cash administration in primarily the most up-to-date financial years, as an illustration. Money allocations posted to Oracle had been recorded as a transaction on the the same day.
“If the transaction it relates to is from the prior year, this means the cash posting is sitting in the wrong year and the accounting records would be incorrect. In [the financial year] 23/24, £2 billion in transactions [were] posted in the wrong year which required correcting manually,” the file says.
The Register already reported that expected project bills for the Oracle ERP project contain mushroomed from around £20 million ($26.5 million) to around £131 million ($173 million).
- City council faces £216.5M loss over Oracle machine debacle
- Europe’s largest council would possibly well perhaps presumably presumably face £12M manual audit invoice after Oracle project effort
- Mega-city’s Oracle machine also can no longer contain efficient cash administration till 2025
- Brit council presents Oracle but every other £10M for first price companies amid ERP fallout
Despite red warnings on its project review, the council went dwell with the change to its aging SAP finance machine, extremely customized arrangement from 1999. The machine went dwell with adjustments, and concerns emerged. The council now plans to reimplement an “out-of-the-box” version of Oracle while it does its finest to repair the present machine.
In their latest file, the auditors highlighted the fight to retain abilities and data regarding the original implementation.
“Since the start of the program, there has been significant turnover of personnel,” the file finds. “Of the present workers, none of them had been involved in the original implementation. The council’s present point of interest is on fixing points going forwards in screech of addressing outdated college concerns.
“Birmingham City Council had a large team supporting SAP. The current Oracle team size is in flux as [the council] are not sure what a stable Oracle solution looks like and therefore what sort of support they would need in place.”
The Reg previously reported that security and audit functions in the council’s Oracle machine had been no longer initially implemented, leaving it unable to detect potential fraud for around 18 months.
The council has been contacted for an announcement. It previously mentioned it plans to dawdle dwell with the reimplementation of Oracle in 2026. ®
