The Fountain Hills Unified School District Governing Board was presented with an audit report during its May 9 meeting and, according to Assistant Superintendent for Business Operations, Dr. Robert Allen, the local district is making progress.

Allen began his report explaining that all filing deadlines had been met and that all reporting, record keeping and documentation for the past fiscal year had been deemed adequate by the auditors.

Allen has spent the past two years cleaning up and addressing these areas, which had been found lacking before his tenure began.

“There are still areas for us to improve, but we’re making progress,” Allen said. “My goal is relentless. We’ll continue making these improvements.”

Two main items had been pinpointed during the previous audit that needed to be addressed in 2016. These included the reconciliation of capital assets and cash with county treasurer reconciliation. For the former, the District had not performed a reconciliation of capital assets to total capital expenditures and, for the latter, it was determined the District had not reviewed the reconciliation between the Maricopa County Education Service Agency and the County Treasurer’s Office.

Allen was happy to report that the actions taken by FHUSD throughout 2015-16 to rectify those findings were deemed satisfactory by the auditors.

For this latest audit, it was determined that FHUSD had no material weaknesses or significant deficiencies in the areas of federal awards and financial statements. In short, bookkeeping practices, filings, reporting and the like have been cleaned up quite a bit in recent years.

The audit also included an evaluation of FHUSD’s Uniform System of Financial Records compliance, looking at approximately 200 items on the USFR questionnaire. This year, 10 items resulted in a finding or deficiency; four in the area of procurement and six in student attendance calculations and reporting. By comparison, 23 USFR findings were discovered from 2014 with 16 from 2015.

Allen explained that steps have already been taken to continue improvements in order to see that number shrink further following the next audit.

“The district also now consults on a regular basis with Henry & Horne [who handles the audits for FHUSD], regarding obtaining oral quotes, improving due diligence documentation and recording attendance data to minimize findings in FY17,” he said. “We’re making sure we’re following the rules as tightly as we possibly can. We’re hitting about 95 percent at this point. We hope to hit 100 percent if we keep plugging along.”