Have an employee incentive-pay program? Keep these things in mind
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Governments in Washington must exercise care when creating and implementing programs to compensate employees beyond their base salary.
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Governments in Washington must exercise care when creating and implementing programs to compensate employees beyond their base salary.
Government organizations have become increasingly dependent on computerized information systems to carry out their operations.
Set of modern electronic devices, computer laptop, digital tablet and mobile smart phone on wooden table
Pictured here, left to right: School Board President Kelly Bashaw; Superintendent Dr. Greg Baker; State Auditor Pat McCarthy
Recently, the Performance Center provided several resources on accounting for capital assets to help local governments with financial reporting. Another group of assets, which fall below a government's capitalization threshold, should also be considered when establishing and evaluating asset policies and other internal controls. In Washington, we frequently refer to these as “small and attractive assets,” but they these could be described using different terminology.
Are you reporting your activities in the correct fund type? Local governments should analyze the services they are providing and determine if the fund types used are appropriate.
An enterprise fund is a fund that may be used to report any activity for which a fee is charged to external users for goods or services. We have observed that local governments sometimes are not reporting enterprise activities in the correct fund type, and noted the following areas of concern:
Today we are publishing the culmination of four years of audit work on Alternative Learning Experience programs, available here.
With the condition of infrastructure serving as a point of national discussion, useful life estimates for capital assets make for a timely accounting topic. Governments must maintain support for the useful life estimates they use for assets, and have a process to reassess the estimates periodically.
Large state agencies will get more in-depth reviews and smaller agencies will get more frequent accountability audits thanks to a boost in funding included in the supplemental state budget approved Thursday.The Office of the Washington State Auditor requested an additional $700,000 to support accountability audit work, and the Legislature agreed.