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~ ~ILLS MEMORANDUM DATE: July 9, 2009 TO: Mayor and City Council members Ron Moorse, City Administrator FROM: Sue Iverson, Finance Director SUBJECT: Update on Finance Department Activities I am pleased to give an update to the City Council on Finance Department activities. 2008, was a year of many changes and challenges, I am pleased to say that finance department staff remained stable as the entire department was new in 2007. I will highlight some of the accomplishments and future goals for the department. · Chart of Accounts We spent a substantial amount of time rewriting the chart of accounts to conform the State Auditor's recommended chart of accounts. This aids in reporting and filing reports to the State Auditor's office as well as preparing the financial statement and quarterly reports. Another problem was that previously, the same code was used for different purposes in different funds making it hard to use the accounting system to run reports. We now have a chart of accounts that is uniform and produces reliable data for reporting. · Audit Process Prior to my coming here, the City had the Auditor prepare the financial statement and all work papers. This resulted in audit findings in the management report and hampered internal reporting. We have now developed all the audit work papers in-house and staff is completing them as transactions occur. We had very few audit questions this last year and the auditors spent the minimum time on-site. · CAFR (Comprehensive Annual Financial Report) We also prepared the Financial Statement in-house starting with the 2006 statement and put it into the GFOA award format. This is a much more comprehensive statement and provides the reader/user with more information. The City did receive the GFOA award for excellence in financial reporting for its 2006 and 2007 financial report. The 2008 report has been submitted for consideration.