Segregation of duties, or separating conflicting duty assignments in your government, can help protect your local government's assets. But which duties do you segregate, and what are your options if you cannot feasibly do this? What if you are a very small entity with limited resources?
Annual report se
A new year has begun, which means it's time for cash-basis governments to close out last year and begin preparing annual financial reports. Annual reports for local governments with fiscal year ending 12/31 are due to the Office of the Washington State Auditor by May 30, 2026.
The Office of the Washington State Auditor is pleased to announce an additional year of school district data in FIT: SAO’s financial transparency tool. FIT provides easy and free access to the financial data of more than 2,200 local governments in our state.
Read on for more information on the latest addition of school district data.
Compensated absences calculations changed in fiscal year 2024 when the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) statement 101, Compensated Absences became effective. This guidance applies to GAAP basis governments, and we also carried it over to cash-basis governments to ensure compensated absences liabilities are calculated consistently across all governments, regardless of basis of accounting. Before this guidance, most governments only considered how much leave employees could cash out upon separation.
The end of September marked the wrap-up of our 2024 calendar year single audits. This was also the deadline for local governments to submit financial statements and audit results to the federal audit clearinghouse because it was nine months after the fiscal year-end.
Originally published January 12, 2024
Updated April 24, 2025
This blog post was originally published in January 2024, but we've recently updated the Checklist for 2025 reporting year. You can find the new Checklist in SAO’s Resource Library. We've also updated the links in this post for your convenience.
What’s new?
In the spring of 2020, SAO changed the way that cash-basis local governments were to report their cash and investment balances. Gone away were reserved and unreserved classifications and in their place came unassigned, assigned, committed, restricted, and nonspendable. This meant a new task was at hand—calculating the amount of total ending cash and investments that fits into these new classifications at the end of each fiscal year. This article helps you understand how a local government's accounting policies may dictate how to calculate these amounts.
The GAAP and Cash Basis BARS Manuals have been updated!
Originally published July 26, 2019
Updated October 28, 2024
This blog post was originally published in July 2019, but we've recently updated the Identifying Asset Retirement Obligations Guide. You can find the new Guide in SAO’s Resource Library. We've also updated the links in this post for your convenience.
Here’s what’s new in the Guide: