Meeting Minutes
Department of Financial Services
Chart of Accounts Project
Meeting Name:
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DFS Chart of Accounts Project
Florida School Finance Officers Association
November 8-9, 2011
1:00 pm
Reunion Resort and Club, Orlando, Florida
Discussion:
Two separate presentations were made at the 2011 Florida School Finance Officers Association
Conference. A detailed presentation was made at 1:00 P.M. on November 8, 2011 to the Finance
Council of the organization. A separate presentation was made at 11:00 A.M. on November 9, 2011 to
the full conference.
November 8, 2011
Attendees: There were 25 attendees, representing 20 separate District School Boards plus the
Department of Education, in the workshop. The Department of Financial Services (DFS) was represented
by Elwood McElhaney.
Mr. McElhaney provided an overview of the project:
1. The Legislature has requested that the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) develop a means of
“obtaining detailed, uniform reporting of governmental financial information to enable citizens
to view compatible information on the use of public funds.”
2. The CFO will develop a standard Chart of Accounts (COA) for this purpose.
3. Agencies will be required to report financial information using these accounts, but will not be
required to adopt these accounts for daily management purposes. Existing financial information
may be mapped to the final COA adopted by the CFO. We anticipate the ability to submit the
required information electronically. The reporting schedule has not yet been determined, but it
will likely be monthly.
4. The CFO will conduct workshops to solicit input through June 30, 2013.
5. A draft of the COA will be published on July 1, 2013, for comments. We do not anticipate many
comments or complaints at that time, as we hope resolve most of the issues prior to publishing
the draft. The comment period will close on October 31, 2013.
6. The CFO will present the following items to the Governor, President of the Senate, and Speaker
of the House by January 15, 2014.
a. The recommended COA; and
b. The estimated cost of adopting and implementing the Uniform COA.
7. Agencies will be asked to provide and defend implementation cost estimates.
McElhaney reviewed the most recently published Auditor General Audit Reports for the 67 School
Districts (Districts) and summarized the accounts that were used. The summary was distributed and
discussed. The reporting structure of the Districts is very similar, which will simplify this process.
McElhaney explained that he does not feel there is a need to use classified accounts (current vs. noncurrent), since the task is to develop a COA and not to present GAAP-based financial statements. The
proposal will likely be to merge the current and non-current assets into a single group of asset accounts,
and to do the same with the liabilities and revenues.
McElhaney stated that it is anticipated that the new GASB #54 reporting requirements can be used for
reporting equities. The attendees verified that they are in the process of implementing GASB #54
reporting.
All School Districts are primarily funded in the same way, and there were only nine revenue types used
for all of the Districts. DFS does not envision many problems in the reporting of revenue.
McElhaney stated that DFS believes the difficult part of this process will be to develop recommendations
for reporting expenditures. Guidance received so far from Legislative staffers is to include fund,
organization structures under the agency level, and details regarding the types of expenditures that
were made. The Districts have a standard expenditure object code classification methodology that will
be a good starting point for this purpose. The Districts are interested in the level of organizational
reporting that will be required, because that will affect the implementation costs. DFS will seek
clarification of this requirement.
The Districts will form a committee to develop recommendations for reporting their financial
information, and present them to DFS sometime in the spring of 2012. The CFO will take all proposals to
the Legislative staff for review and comments.
The reporting requirements include “entities created by a school district.” There was discussion
regarding the definition of these entities. While it was suggested that this was intended to include
charter schools, some charter schools were not ‘created by the school districts.’ DFS will seek
clarification of this requirement from the Legislature.
DFS will keep in touch so that everyone knows of decisions that have been made on the project. DFS
has established a project web site and will post information there as it becomes available. DFS also
plans to hold webinars, conference calls and other forums to share information.
The attendees understood and were generally supportive of the requirements of the project. The
Finance Council workshop ended at approximately 2:30 P.M.
November 9, 2011
Mr. McElhaney made a presentation to the conference attendees to discuss the background, nature,
and current status of the project. The discussions and decisions that had been made the previous day
during the Finance Council workshop were also discussed. The attendees understood the project and
appeared to be supportive of our needs. An estimated 200 people were in attendance.
This presentation ended at approximately 11:45 AM.