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Bureau to get monthly budget reports via Q*Bert; three funds show healthy reserves
Summary
Department of Consumer Affairs staff told the Bureau of Household Goods and Services advisory council the bureau will soon be able to run its own monthly fiscal reports using Q*Bert; current fund statements show months-in-reserve well above concern levels.
The Bureau of Household Goods and Services will soon be able to run its own monthly fiscal reports, Department of Consumer Affairs budget staff told the advisory council on Nov. 7.
Carl Berman of the Department of Consumer Affairs budget office said the bureau and DCA information services are building a reporting workflow that will pull a monthly data dump into Q*Bert so the bureau “should be able to run its own, fiscal reports every single month via the Q*Bert software.”
Berman reviewed the bureau’s three fund-condition statements and said the documents show “incredibly healthy” reserves. He noted the current displays use full appropriations, which overstate spending compared with actual expenditures in recent years and therefore understate reserves somewhat; that, he said, posed no concern for the budget office.
Council members asked about months in reserve for each program; Berman said appliance repair showed roughly 16 months, household movers about nine months and home furnishings about four months in the worksheet the bureau circulated. He and other staff projected the Q*Bert reporting tool would be ready for bureau use by Jan. 1, 2020, and that the monthly data dumps would follow on a regular schedule once the system is in production.
The council did not take formal action; the presentation was an operations update and budgeting briefing.
