School Finance Badge #02: Year-End Financial Reporting-School Finance Badge #2

Video Transcription

Video Summary

Instructor Holly Berlingham provides an overview of school district year-end closing and financial reporting. She emphasizes starting early, building a timeline by working backward from key due dates, and assigning responsibilities. The main deadline is submitting a completed F-196 (with edits cleared) to the ESD around late October; the SEFA report is due to the State Auditor’s Office by the end of November; notes to the financial statements are due when auditors arrive.<br /><br />Before August 31, districts should run preliminary recovery/carryover and maintenance-of-effort calculations, clean up purchase orders, review ASB balances, perform physical inventory, reconcile balance sheet accounts through July, validate account code combinations, and gather information on long-term contracts, leases, and subscription-based IT arrangements (GASB requirements).<br /><br />After August 31, districts complete expenditure accruals (A/P, payroll), revenue accruals (A/R, grants), and balance sheet adjustments across all funds. Guidance covers modified accrual rules, unearned revenue, USDA commodities entries, recovery liabilities, and lease accounting (splitting principal/interest). Finally, reconcile every balance sheet account with documentation, use OSPI tools (fund balance, recovery/carryover, COA validation, pension reporting), complete required manual F-196 reports, and organize audit-ready binders.

Keywords

school district year-end closing

financial reporting timeline

F-196 submission

SEFA report

GASB lease accounting

accruals and balance sheet reconciliation

OSPI reporting tools

audit-ready documentation binders