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Government and Not-for-Profit accountability in financial reporting

Most of your average governmental entities engage in three broad categories of activities/funds:

1. Governmental activities - stuff financed mostly with taxes and intergovernmental grants; these correlate with governmental funds. There are five types of these:
a. General fund - resources not restricted.
b. Special revenue funds - restricted purpose.
c. Debt service funds - payment of principal and interest.
d. Capital projects funds - for things like buildings and highways.
e. Permanent funds - corpus locked, only earnings expendable.

2. Business-type activities - stuff financed mostly with user fees; these correlate with proprietary funds. There are two types:
a. Enterprise funds - for business type activities.
b. Internal service funds - for stuff provided to different departments within the government.

3. Fiduciary activities - where the government acts as a trustee or agent for someone or something else; these correlate with fiduciary funds. There are two types:
a. Trust funds - pension trusts, investment trusts, private purpose trusts (like for an escheat fund).
b. Agency funds - For resources held for another agency on a short-term basis.

And we all know the purpose of accounting in any sector is accountability (accounting/accountability). I see a common root word).

1. There are two types of accountability that the GASB talks about - what are they and what is a brief definition?
2. Which concept applies to which of the three types of activities from the previous question?
3. Based on the preceding answer, what type of accounting does each of these use?
4. Each of those three activities requires three different sets of financial statements. What are the basic statements required for each? When listing these, please note what the for-profit equivalent is to help you with a frame of reference.
5. What is deferred revenue and how is treated depending on the type of fund reporting?
6. What is the difference between a financial statement that combines funds with one that consolidates them?
7. What are major funds and in what key ways are major funds reported differently then nonmajor funds?
8. Look at cook county, IL CAFR and tell us on what type of activities/funds your government entity reports. What type of revenues and expenses are in each?

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1) The two types of accountability that the GASB talked about are fiscal accountability and the operational accountability.
Fiscal accountability: It is defined as the responsibility of governments to justify that the action take by them in the current period have complied with public decisions concerning the raising and spending of public moneys in the short term period. Here the public decisions is considered to be the legally adopted budget whereas short term period is considered to be one budgetary cycle i.e. one year.

Operational accountability: It is defined as governments' responsibility to report the extent to which they have met their operating objectives efficiently and effectively, using all resources available for that purpose, and whether they can continue to meet their objectives for the foreseeable future. So we can say that operational accountability makes the government ...

Solution Summary

Government and Not-for-Profit accountability in financial report are examined.