How Charter Schools Can Survive Audit Season With the Right Tools and Processes

As the end of the academic calendar year approaches for charter schools, so too does audit season. If you’re a member of the finance or operations teams for a charter school, you already know what’s in store, and that gearing up for audit season is a year-round process. That doesn’t mean that you can’t benefit from some tips and reviewing the tools and processes needed to ensure for smooth sailing during your audit.

Have a Plan in Place

In order to prepare for a successful audit, there should be sufficient internal controls put in place. While you normally get to pick your own auditor, audit procedures should be properly followed and be scheduled by your team ahead of time to establish free flowing lines of communication and organization.

Handing your auditor a fleshed out audit plan with dates and deadlines for having engagement letters signed, conducting interim audit fieldwork, and creating templates for cash equivalents, bonds and debt confirmations allows your school to be prepared and creates a much more proactive process as opposed to a reactive one. You can even create target dates to have the audit report done, and dates on when you will present the audit report to your board of directors. If you’re starting this process at the end of March, you should be aiming to have this done by the end of August.

Report Correctly the First Time

Financial reporting should be done regularly to follow GAAS (generally accepted auditing standards) or other international standards on auditing. Publicly traded companies are also required to follow PCAOB standards, which is a regulatory board reporting to the SEC who oversees the audits of public companies.

Regular financial reporting is one thing, but constantly engaging with your auditors is another. Not only should you be reporting regularly with the right standards, you should also make it a habit to have continuous contact with your auditors throughout the year. For example, if you were contemplating purchasing a new athletic facility for your school in the month of February, you should contact your auditor before signing any lease agreement to understand the accounting and tax implications of the lease, and how the transaction will be audited.

Bringing auditors in from the beginning of these transactions or for any general information allows for compliance and proper accounting on your first go, which limits the surprises for both you and your auditor. You can consult your auditor on many topics, including complicated transactions, new federal programs and policies, changes to audit guidelines, and the implementation of new systems.

Use Tools that Don’t Break the Bank

Compliance tools and technologies are necessary and in today’s climate are difficult to avoid completely. Public charter schools are often strapped for funding and resources, making spend management even more integral. Unfortunately, those same resource restrictions also make it harder for charter schools to invest in the technologies they need to gain greater control over their spend.

There are now a range of e-procurement software solutions on the market that fit a wide range of organizational sizes and structures and help modernize the process and save you time and money as well as providing more transparency for your spending.

Try to look for a solution that allows teachers and administrators have visibility into your budgets, while also setting up the proper approval routing so that there your designated decision makers are still empowered. A system like this means you no longer have to hunt down paper purchase orders and filter through years of inbox spam e-mail requests – you can have all your POs and budget requests in one centralized system with visibility for as many people as you’d like.

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Aman Mann is the CEO & Cofounder of Procurify, a SaaS startup based in Vancouver, Canada that is helping organizations reinvent the way they track, manage and control spending.