Our officers complete proformas for exactly the reason you gave. If this process was followed then our auditor is not fussy with the actual decision as he acknowledged it was often a matter of opinion, what he wanted was ‘that a new officer could not award a backdate without it being approved/checked’.
The second reason why we introduced the proforma was to get the officers to record information about the decision
– on what document is the request
– is there any supporting evidence eg letters from doctor
– what was their thought process on deciding to award it.
Having all this info together helps greatly when the audit is done as saves time looking for documents that may or may not exist.