Colonial Beach Fiscal Year 2019 Audit Clean But Not Without Some Blemishes
By Linda Farneth
The town of Colonial Beach fell behind on their 2019 fiscal year audit. Several factors have contributed to the delay which include employee turnover and implementation of a new accounting system.
Aaron B. Hawkins was on hand early this month and presented the FY 2019 audit results for Robinson, Farmer, Cox Associates, PLLC. The firm has performed the town’s audit reports for fiscal years 2018 and 2019. Hawkins attended the Colonial Beach Town Council work session on March 4.
Hawkins confirmed that staff issues and learning a new accounting system both played a part in the audit process being delayed for the fiscal year 19 audit. Certain reporting tasks perform by the staff were not completed due to the town’s lack of financial director.
The management letter states the audit contained no material defects and followed standard accounting principals
Hawkins said, “The management letter identifies things that we think are internal control improvements within the town. Things that didn’t rise to the level of being reported in the financial report as a finding.”
Hawkins explained, “It basically says, based on the testing that we did we feel that the financial statements that follow this are free of any material misstatements. It’s an unmodified opinion which is as clean as you can get.”
The auditors reported in their opinion statement that the town underwent a change in accounting principals that changed the way forms of debt were classified and what they were called. “I don’t believe that it really affected the town in any way.”
The audit revealed 5 material weaknesses with the third listed weakness being of some concern to the Hawkins.
Material Weakness 2019-003 regarded money that was not deposited in a timely manner.
Hawkins said, “This was a new finding during the year and one that was kind of a bit troubling.” There was cash and checks that were received by the town and not deposited for a couple of months.
The audit report states that $197,963.37 was received as of June 30, 2019 but the funds were not deposited until late July and early August. The funds were kept in a drawer in the Town office. A majority of these funds were in the form of check rather than cash.
It was stated in the report that the cause of this was because procedures were not in place to adequately deposit and record receipts at the end of the fiscal year.
Town Manager Responds To Late Deposit
Colonial Beach News reached out to the town for a more precise explanation, Town Manager Quinn Robertson responded to Audit Finding 2019-003:
Robertson said, during the months of February 2019 and October 2019 the town was in the process of implementing a new accounting software program called Edmunds…
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