Iqaluit (Apr 07/03) - In order to clear its books, Nunavut Arctic College has written off more than $650,000 it was owed.

College president Mac Clendenning said the money comes from transactions between 1996 and 2000.

"It's a whole range of things. Some of it was tuitions, some of it was outstanding accounts with people we've done third party training with," he explained.

The college tried on several occasions to get the money back but could not find the proper documentation. At the same time, administration had no proof of whether or not the money was ever received.

"In a lot of the cases, the payments may actually have been received by the college but didn't get credited back to the accounts receivable, which left them showing as outstanding," said Clendenning.

With the $650,000 in outstanding accounts appearing in financial reports year after year, Clendenning said, the auditor general suggested if the money could not be obtained it should be written off.

"The auditor general kept noting that we should take some action on it so that we can start again with a clean slate," he said.

The final decision was made at the board of governors meeting in Cambridge Bay during the last weekend of March. Clendenning said in order to make a substantial writeoff, administration must get approval from the board of governors and must be able to justify it.

"We've had a financial consultant in place for the past year, working on trying to identify what the problems were and trying to look at what procedures we need to put in place to ensure this doesn't happen again," said Clendenning.

"We've also had an interim bursar for the past 18 months. A lot of the credit for the fact things are in better shape should be given to him."

The next step for the college is to hire a full-time bursar. Clendenning said he hopes to hire one before the end of June.

Nunavut Arctic College's annual budget is about $18 million. This year's expected deficit is just over $45,000.

Clendenning said the $650,000 writeoff will not affect the daily operations at the college because administration has taken it into account -- it's as though it never existed.