YELLOW SHEET
Office of the State Auditor of Missouri
Claire McCaskill
|
YELLOW SHEET Office of the State Auditor of Missouri |
Report No. 2000-49
June 21, 2000
IMPORTANT: The Missouri State Auditor is required by Missouri law to conduct audits only once every four years in counties, like Dent, which do not have a county auditor. However, to assist such counties in meeting federal audit requirements, the State Auditor will also perform a financial and compliance audit of various county operating funds every two years. This voluntary service to Missouri counties can only be provided when state auditing resources are available and does not interfere with the State Auditor's constitutional responsibility of auditing state government.
Once every four years, the State Auditor's statutory audit will cover additional areas of county operations, as well as the elected county officials, as required by Missouri's Constitution.
This audit of Dent County was a financial and compliance audit of various county operating funds. The following concerns were noted as part of the audit:
As reported in our prior audit report, the County Clerk has not established procedures to ensure all receipts and disbursements are properly recorded on the county's computerized financial records and included in the County Treasurer's semi-annual settlement totals which are used to prepare county budgets. The cash balances on the budgeted documents are sometimes inaccurate and inconsistent. While the ending cash balance should agree to the County Treasurer's December semi-annual settlement, these amounts often differed.
Also as noted in our prior report, the County Treasurer has not maintained perpetual cash balances in fund ledgers. The December 31, 1999, bank reconciliation for the general checking account contained numerous errors and the corrected reconciled bank balance exceeded the cash balances on the County Treasurer's semi-annual settlements by more than $7,000.
The audit also includes some other matters upon which the county should consider and take appropriate corrective action.