Tertiary Institutions in Nigeria have been passing through crisis which had threatened the ideals of the institutions. The issue of delay or prolong payment or refund of incurred expenditure to a member of staff of any institutions either for attending training / conferences or for the upkeep of an institutions has been a subject of discuss in recent time. Often time a member of staff is deprived of attending training and conferences which they are due for and qualified to attend either due to lack of funds or more often as a result of late approval and release of funds. The difficulty involved in accessing fund in our institutions can be ascribed to the unnecessary bureaucracy/ bottlenecks created within the system. This has undoubtedly caused a setback to the growth of our institutions. The study was carried out to find out the factors responsible for the delay and suggest ways for improvement. The study was a case study, survey design while the analysis follows the empirical causal design. Five randomly selected institutions in Ondo state were sampled for the study. 100 copies of structured questionnaires designed on a 5-point likert rating scales were distributed to the respondents. 94 copies of the questionnaires were duly filled and returned. Data obtained from the questionnaires were presented in tables and analysed with the use of descriptive statistics and Pearson Correlations. The study reveals that the delay in payment/ refund of staff entitlements was due to major management bottlenecks or bureaucracy and to a little extent a kind of constraints from the bursary and audit units.
Keywords: Accounting, Bottlenecks, Delay, Payment System, Tertiary Institutions
