RSU 50 board members received the results of the district’s most recent audit in their Jan. 13 meeting in Dyer Brook.
Peter Davis, CPA with Davis, Gates & Alward reviewed the findings and the district is in good financial shape.
“When we issue an audit report it can either be qualified or unqualified,” said Davis. “Unqualified basically means that it is a clean opinion. We had no particular issues and no question on costs. That is the type of report that we have issued for the school.”
As part of the audit, accountants examine district finances, while reviewing “internal controls” or how the district handles its funding.
“When we perform audit procedures, if we find something that we don’t think is correct then we have to make a determination and classify it as far as significance,” explained Davis. “Items that we find that are not material or significant in our opinion, but still need to be mentioned go into a separate letter, which is called a management letter,” Davis said. “We have issued a management letter to the school for this past year.”
Davis said the only item of concern on the management letter was a credit card for a C.N. Brown account.
“When we test expenses we sample those, we do not look at them all,” Davis explained. “We look at statements and invoices. We like to see invoices accompany the statements. We could not locate some of the invoices for the C.N. Brown account. There was nothing wrong with the charge.”
Davis, Gates & Alward sampled 85 transactions, with only four invoices that could not be tracked down.
“To us that is not particularly a big issue,” Davis added.
Superintendent Larry Malone noted the RSU had heard from the Department of Education on the management letter.
“We corrected that in May,” he said.
The next RSU 50 board meeting is 6:30 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 10 at Katahdin Elementary School in Stacyville.
