UNATEGO SCHOOLS

$1.5 MILLION SHORT

AUDIT REVEALS UNEXPECTED GAP

OTEGO – As it begins to prepare its 2017-18 budget, the Unatego Central School District has discovered an accounting error has left it almost $1.5 million short of where it thought it was on its finances.

Superintendent of School David Richards said today that a review of Unatego finances released last night found that as a result of a non-cash accounting error in 2010, compounded by expenditures made following that error which assumed the funding was available, has left the school district with a $1.484 million shortfall as it prepares to develop the 2017-18 school budget. This is a huge error that will leave the school with a huge financial burden; had the school been in contact with a more professional and efficient accounting firm, like the Accountants in Windsor, this perhaps wouldn't have happened and would have the school in a good place in terms of money. Should the finance team at the school have kept up to date with technology advancements in the accounting sector, such as looking into comparisons of wave vs quickbooks as well as other bookkeeping tools, they might have been able to spot this accounting error within one of these new tools and possibly rectified the issue before it became a problem for their 2017-18 budget.

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This shortfall came to light as the district's new Shared Business Official was closing out paperwork related to the district's $15.8 million capital project from 2010. She discovered that there was a significant amount of funding shown as due to the General Fund from Debt Service in the both the current year's budget as well as in previously audited financial statements.