Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Budget Accounting topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Budget committee demands clearer accounting after members flag $230,000 discrepancy
Summary
Effingham’s budget committee voted to request first-quarter subaccount detail and quarterly reconciliations after members identified a mismatch between a 'lapsing' figure and a cleaned spreadsheet, which committee members said left roughly $230,000 unexplained.
Committee member (S3) pressed the Effingham Budget Committee on Thursday to get a clearer view of where town money is recorded after he found a large discrepancy in reported lapsing funds.
"The cleaned up sheet shows just under 141,000," Committee member (S3) said, summarizing a comparison he made to an earlier printout that listed $371,000 as lapsing; he described the difference as about $230,000 "unaccounted for" and said that represented roughly 10% of the operating budget. He asked the committee to receive more detailed subaccount information so members could identify vendors and misposted charges.
Chair (S1) responded that the committee would ask the finance administrator for clearer subaccount listings and that the chair would distribute subaccount detail for the first quarter to the committee. Chair (S1) also described a printing/formatting problem — account numbers in the report had an extraneous "26" prefix that caused pages to print in the wrong order — and said staff would try to fix the format without breaking the accounting system.
Members pointed to specific examples they want clarified, including credit-card memos that say only "Amazon" without invoice detail and a radio/IT charge that appeared under the wrong account. Chair (S1) said staff had acknowledged some items were posted incorrectly and would work to clean them up.
The committee also discussed revenue recognition and reconciliations. Committee member (S3) asked whether revenues such as building permits and other fees were being attributed correctly and proposed receiving quarterly reconciliations from the treasurer until the annual audit reconciles the records. Committee members agreed that quarterly reconciliations would help identify where money is being recorded and clarify deferred revenue treatment.
On property sales and delinquencies, Chair (S1) confirmed that deeds from recent sales had been transferred and the sales removed from the delinquency ledger; committee members nevertheless said the overall arrears number remained higher than expected for the time of year.
What happens next: Chair (S1) said he would obtain and circulate subaccount detail for all accounts for the first quarter and work with the finance administrator and treasurer on quarterly reconciliations; the committee will review those materials at a future meeting.
