Meeting Agenda
Department of Financial Services
Chart of Accounts Project
Meeting Name: DFS Chart of Accounts Project
Meeting Group: Florida School Finance Officers Association – Finance
Committee
Date: November 8, 2011
Time: 1 pm
Location: Reunion Resort and Club, Orlando, Florida
Requestor:
Agenda:
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
Introductions
Overview of Section 215.89, Florida Statutes
Charts of Account Development Plans
Discussion of Research
Questions & Answers
Contact Information
Minutes:
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. non-current), since the task is to develop a COA and not to present GAAPbased 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.