An audit of Ohio State’s financial statements turned up five significant issues, according to a report that will be presented to members of the Board of Trustees on Thursday.

The audit, which was performed by the firm Deloitte & Touche, found 16 deficiencies with OSU’s internal controls for financial reporting, five of which were deemed “significant” under the standards of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

One significant deficiency, which concerned payroll controls, was identified last year in the previous audit performed by Deloitte, but the problem has not yet been fixed, according to the audit. Deloitte performs its audit annually.

Among the payroll problems identified by the audit were the failures of some departments to complete payroll checklists or certifications, an excessive number of people with access to payroll information and late processing of terminations. Of the more than 26,000 terminations during 2008, 23 percent were processed anywhere from 30 days to almost 10 years after the employment ended. One graduate student employee was paid for three months after the position ended.

In order to remedy these payroll control issues, Senior Vice President for Business and Finance Bill Shkurti and Vice President for Human Resources Larry Lewellen agreed to move the responsibility for payroll from the Office of Human Resources to the Office of Business and Finance, which includes the Office of the Controller, Shkurti said in an e-mail.

“We felt that [payroll control] is primarily a budget control function that fits better in the Controller’s office,” Shkurti said in an e-mail. “The Controller’s office is better structured to accomplish this function because it has application of controls as its primary function, whereas [Human Resources] does not.”

Two more of the significant deficiencies listed in the audit concerned the OSU Medical Center’s information security, and another two concerned the Medical Center’s financial accounting.

OSU plans to fix one information security problem by March 31 and the other by June 30, and is fixing the financial reporting problems, according to the report.

The audit cost $1.4 million, including $63,000 in contingency funds, the uses of which included additional work on a new software system installed in the hospital system, Shkurti said.

The report will be presented to the Board’s Audit and Compliance Committee Thursday.