Week 4 Part 5 Interview with Business Manager

Our external auditor has been serving our district for over 15 years.  There is no one in our office that was around when they were selected, and since they have done such a spectacular job over the last 15 years the district has had no reason to pursue a change. Also a change would require a search and possibly be a costly event for the district.  In bigger school districts, they perform a RFP search annually to find an external auditor, this is cost effective for them, buy not for small districts.  Our auditors follow the GAAS standards, Generally Accepted Accounting Standards. Our business manager did not elaborate on this, but from what I understand this is very normal. When I asked about the audit findings, our BM replied with, “A bunch of stuff.”  I glanced at our audit report for the past year and discovered a bunch of numbers that did not make real clear sense for me.  I did however have a conversation with our BM about the two major reports.  She explained that one of those reports looks at the district as if we were a corporation, and that is not very useful for us.  It includes things like depreciation and we do not benefit from that as a school district. This report is only included because of those GAAS standards.  The other major report is very useful due to the big picture nature of the information, the bottom line expenditures and fund balance numbers.  Our audit report is publically presented at a school board meeting in the fall annually.