Meeting Minutes
Department of Financial Services
Chart of Accounts Project
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DFS Chart of Accounts Project
SUS Inter-Institutional Committee on Finance and Accounting
October 14, 2011
8:30 am
Homewood Suites, Orlando, Florida
Attendees: There were 35 Inter-Institutional Committee on Finance and Accounting (ICOFA) attendees
signed in for the meeting. The Department of Financial Services (DFS) was represented by Elwood
McElhaney and Christina Smith. 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 to 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 11 universities
and summarized the accounts that were used. The summary was distributed and discussed. The
reporting structure of the universities 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
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. The attendees concurred.
McElhaney stated that it is anticipated that 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 universities still use the state object codes for expenditure
classifications, and it appears they would be agreeable to using these codes for expenditure
classifications. McElhaney stated that the state standard object codes will probably be expanded
because of this project.
The reporting frequency will have to be addressed by the Legislature when, and if, they pass an
implementing law. Initial discussions have centered on the monthly reporting of balances.
1. The universities recommended quarterly reporting as an alternative.
2. There was general discussion concerning 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.
3. There was discussion regarding the anticipated organizational level of reporting, and the
effect on reporting costs as the reporting level goes deeper into the organization.
ICOFA will form a subcommittee to develop recommendations for reporting their financial information,
and present them to DFS sometime after their next meeting in February 2012. The CFO will take all
proposals to the Legislative staff for review and comments. McElhaney will provide the link to the DFS
Bureau of Local Government reporting requirements to Brad Bennett for review and distribution to the
ICOFA membership. This is an annual reporting process, and is not necessarily recommended for this
COA exercise. The reporting requirements include component units of the universities. This caused
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. ICOFA will be asked to provide us with
estimates, but it will be very difficult to audit or verify the estimates. The universities 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 the project gets
deeper into the organization structure. The project team will work to clarify the levels of reporting once
the recommendations of the universities are received. It is anticipated that the CFO would not be
opposed to receiving multiple cost estimates based on different reporting structures.
After the COA discussion, the universities had a series of questions on other financial issues that were
discussed with Christina Smith. Issues discussed included documentation requirements on cost
reimbursement contracts and recent IRS rulings relating to employee cell phone allowances.
The presentation ended at approximately 10:30 AM.