School finances receive clean bill of health in audit

No problems were found an audit of the finances of Alleghany County Schools, which was discussed during the Alleghany County Board of Education’s Jan. 5 meeting.

A report on the audit was presented by Jim Lowdermilk and Rick Hammer of Lowdermilk Church & Co. of Morganton.

“(The report) is rather long and detailed,” Loudermilk informed the board. “We found no problems, it was a clean report.” Included in the report were the awards and grants that were received by the school system.

“A lot of money goes through this system,” Loudermilk said. “This is a big business you’re operating here; it’s probably as big as one of the larger companies in the county.”

In terms of the general fund, the fund began with $680,164 and ended with $870,846.

Leys noted in a later interview that this reflects an increase in the fund balance.

“We have stayed within the total budget and the variances (the difference between the budget and actual activity) are not significant,” she said Tuesday. “As long as you stay within your total budget without significant variances, then you have a clean report.”

The school system had two budget columns, one for budget, or the money budgeted by the school system, and one for actual, which is the revenue received.

“The importance of an audit is to get an annual picture of your financial status and to check for any improprieties,” Leys explained. Leys explained that the audited statements consisted of the management’s discussion and analysis, basic financial statements and a required supplemental section that presents combining statements for non-major governmental and enterprising funds.

“The basic financial statements include two types of statements that present different views of the board’s finances,” Leys said in the report. “The first is the government-wide statements. The district-wide statements are presented in the full accrual basis of accounting and include the statement of net assets and the statement of activities. The statement of net assets includes all of the board’s assets and liabilities. Assets and liabilities are classified in the order of relative liquidity for assets and due date for liabilities. The statement provides a summary of the board’s investment in assets and obligations to creditors. A statement of activities summarizes the board’s revenues and expenses for the current year. A net revenue format is used to indicate to what extent each function is self-efficient.”

The second type of statement in the basic financial statement are the fund financial statements. These are presented for the board’s governmental and proprietary funds.

“These statements present the governmental funds on the modified accrual basis of accounting, measuring the near-term inflows and outflows of financial resources and what is available at year-end to spend in the next fiscal year. The fund financial statements focus on the board’s most significant funds. The district-wide statements provide information about the board as an economic unit, while the fund financial statements provide information on the financial resources of the board’s major funds.”

Get the rest of this article in this week's issue of the Alleghany News! Back