Governmental and Not-for-profit Accounting - Problem Set

Part 1

You are the chief financial officer of a local government. You have been asked to discuss the relevance of budgeting in today's government to a group of newly elected city administrators at a national conference. Prepare a PowerPoint presentation of 10-12 slides. Your presentation should address the following points:

What is a budget? What information should it include?
Why is budgeting important to governments?
Describe the various types of budgets prepared by governmental entities and review their purpose.
Provide an overview of the budgetary accounting process (how to record budget, close entries, and so on).
Review the budgetary reporting requirements. Which statements and schedules are required by GASB?
What information can a user (public manager or policy decision maker) hope to derive by reviewing these documents?

Add additional information in the Notes section of the PowerPoint presentation.

Part 2

Indicate which of the following transactions require entries to accounts used only for budgetary control purposes, even if other accounts also are involved. Prepare the general journal entries required. Assuming a beginning total fund balance of $1,000,000, what would the total fund balance be after taking into consideration the effects of these transactions?
Adopted the budget—estimated revenues of $5,000,000 and appropriations of $4,900,000.
Levied property taxes of $3,500,000. One percent has been uncollectible historically.
Paid salaries of $2,700,000.
Hired a new director of public works at an agreed salary of $60,000.
Ordered materials and supplies expected to cost $103,000.
Amended the appropriation for public works to increase it by $10,000.
Received half of the materials and supplies order at an actual cost of $51,500.

Part 3

Final Project Part 3 (of 5)

Review the CAFR you selected Fairfax County. Based on your review, answer the following questions:

In which section of the CAFR can the budget-to-actual comparisons of the major funds be found?
Are the actual amounts on a GAAP or a budgetary basis? Do the statements include a reconciliation of any differences between GAAP and budgetary amounts? If so, what are the largest reconciling items?
Does the government encumber goods or services that have been ordered but not yet received? How, if at all, are these goods or services reflected in the governmental fund balance sheet?
What other sections of the CAFR typically present budgetary information?
Do you think the budgetary disclosures in the report fully address the need of all relevant stakeholder groups? Explain your response