Meeting Minutes
Department of Financial Services
Chart of Account Project
Meeting Name: DFS Chart of Accounts Project
Meeting Group: State College Council of Business Affairs – Accounting Committee
Date: October 5, 2011
Time: 3:00 pm
Location: Hilton Resort, Sandestin, Florida
Requestor:
Attendees:
See sign-in sheets
Discussion:
Elwood 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.
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 implementation cost estimates.
McElhaney reviewed the most recently published Auditor General Audit Reports for the 28 colleges and
summarized the accounts that were used. The summary was distributed and discussed. The reporting
structure of the colleges 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. non-current), since our 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. The attendees concurred.
McElhaney stated that it is anticipated that the new GASB 54 reporting requirements can be used for
reporting equities. Colleges quickly stated that, even though they are component units of the State,
they are not required to report using GASB 54. McElhaney stated that GASB 54 requirements give the
Legislature a single ‘Unassigned’ Net Assets figure, which is exactly what they want to see. The team is
open to other reporting models for the colleges, and look forward to their recommendations.
McElhaney further stated that he 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. McElhaney distributed an example of the object code classifications that
are used by the State. This is a starting point, and was provided for discussion purposes only. The
project team is open to other recommendations. The colleges have a standard expenditure
classification methodology that they will provide for review and consideration.
The colleges annually report expenditures by function – direct instruction, academic support, student
services, institutional support, physical plant, and other. That would be an acceptable proposal for
reporting costs, as long as they could break it down by object code or some other ‘type’ of expenditure.
The colleges assured McElhaney that it could be done. Unfortunately, this exercise is only done annually
for presentation in the CAFR.
The reporting frequency will have to be addressed by the Legislature when, and if, they pass an
implementing law. Initial discussions have centered on monthly reporting of balances.
1. Colleges do not go through a monthly closing process. If a monthly reporting cycle were
adopted, the colleges would be required to extract data on a monthly basis and submit it,
even if they do not actually run a closing process.
2. There was general discussion around the idea that most balance sheet account balances are
only trued up as of the balance sheet date. Interim balance sheet balances will be relatively
useless.
The colleges will form a committee to develop recommendations for reporting their financial
information, and present them to McElhaney sometime after their next meeting in May 2012. The CFO
will take all proposals to the Legislative staff for review and comments.
The reporting requirements include component units of the colleges. This caused some concern in both
obtaining the information and reporting on it. McElhaney reinforced that this is a requirement in the
law and must be addressed.
There was discussion about the costs of implementation. The colleges will be asked to provide
McElhaney with estimates, but it will be very difficult to audit or verify the estimates. The colleges
should be prepared to justify their estimates to Legislative inquiries. The implementation costs will vary
based on other decisions that are made regarding the level of reporting. The cost will increase as we go
deeper into the organization structure. The project team will work to clarify the levels of reporting once
the recommendations of the colleges are received. It is anticipated that the CFO would not be opposed
to receiving multiple cost estimates based on different reporting structures.
The presentation ended at approximately 3:50 PM.