Township accepts 2023 audit and approves $25,000 deep-dive to clean up interfunds and capital accounting

Warrington supervisors accepted the township's 2023 financial audit and authorized a follow-up phase-2 accounting review on Sept. 10 to clean up interfund balances and capital-project accounting errors, approving up to $25,000 for the work.

Matt Einauer, the audit supervisor from Zielinski & Axelrod, told the board the firm issued an "unmodified opinion," meaning the financial statements were fairly presented in all material respects under U.S. generally accepted accounting principles. Einauer said the audit produced no management-letter comments and no disagreements with management.

Board members followed with questions about audit sampling and the risk that collusion or fraud might remain undetected; Einauer explained the audit relies on sampling and internal-control testing and therefore cannot provide absolute assurance against every possible concealment. "We test everything on a sample basis," he said, "so it's always possible that there's fraud or collusion that we would not identify, which is why we can't give absolute assurance."

Separately, supervisors reviewed findings from a recent internal review that identified large interfund entries and inconsistent allocation of capital versus operating costs, particularly for the multi-phase Lions Pride Park project. One supervisor said a seven-year reconstruction of ledger data suggested project costs and soft costs had been significantly understated.

The board voted to give staff authority to correct due-to/due-from interfund entries and approved the second-phase deep dive (not to exceed $25,000) to reconcile capital projects and provide clearer budget data prior to the 2025 budget cycle. The work is intended to allow the township to close an older bond and to present more accurate capital forecasts during budget preparation.