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Finance staff flags invoice dating and fixed-asset errors that delayed audits
Summary
Finance staff told the committee that invoices entered into Great Plains in the wrong period and errors from a fixed-asset module must be corrected before auditors can finish 2024–25 work; consultants have been hired to clean data and re-run reports.
Cecilia, the district finance lead, told the Rancho Murieta Finance Committee on March 12 that two accounting problems have delayed the 2024–25 audit and forced a change in the district's budget process. She said staff have completed most reconciliations but discovered invoices and fixed assets recorded in incorrect fiscal periods that must be corrected before auditors will proceed.
Cecilia described an error in accounts payable entries where invoices dated Jan. 1, 2024 were historically posted to July 2024 in the general ledger, a discrepancy she said "creates activity in two different fiscal years" and requires a case-by-case review and reclassification. She said the district's accrued-expenses work is intended to fix timing mismatches so invoices appear in the period they were incurred.
Separately, Cecilia said the Great Plains fixed-asset module pushed previously entered assets into fiscal year 2025 when staff tried to load prior years' items, producing overstated fixed-asset balances. "When we pushed in fixed assets for '23 and '24 in 2025, the system got very confused," she told the committee, and the district hired a Great Plains consultant to remove incorrect items and regenerate reports.
Cecilia said audit workpaper preparation is roughly three-quarters complete but the 2024–25 audit remains on hold while staff finish the reconciliation and fixed-asset clean-up; auditors are now expected to resume in April. She recommended running updates one year at a time and boosting in-house accounting experience to prevent similar errors.
Committee members pressed for detail on how the errors affected month-to-month reporting and asked whether prior budgets were reliable. Cecilia said she will present corrected budget-versus-actual statements to the full board once the clean-up is finished.
Next steps: staff will complete accrual reviews and fixed-asset reconciliation with consultant assistance and present updated financial statements to the board when the audit work is ready to proceed.
