Announcements

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Sept. 20, 2022

OLYMPIA – Today the Office of the Washington State Auditor released a fraud report and audit of Mason County Fire District No. 12, showing almost $70,000 in misappropriated public funds, as well as $95,000 in unsupported expenses.

Auditors also documented an overall disregard for state laws at the District in areas including ethics and conflicts of interest, open public meetings and financial transparency.

When your government becomes aware of a known or suspected loss of public funds, state law requires that you immediately report it to the State Auditor's Office. The most effective way to report is through the “How to Report a Concern” page on SAO's website.

WSCPA President and CEO, Kimberly Scott (left), presenting Director of Local Audit Kelly Collins, CPA, CFE (right) with the 2021-2022 Outstanding Leader award.

For the first time in three years, the annual Washington Finance Officers Association conference will be live and in person Tuesday, Sept. 13 through Friday, Sept. 16 at the Greater Tacoma Convention Center. As always, the WFOA conference is a unique, once-a-year opportunity to attend valuable training sessions, find out about the latest and greatest auditing and accounting resources, and share tips and advice with financial experts and your colleagues.

For planning and budgeting purposes, we recently notified our clients that SAO's hourly billing rates as of Jan. 1, 2023, will be as follows:

The hourly rate for auditors in travel status will remain at 75 percent of the applicable hourly rate.

Earlier this summer we announced SAO would be phasing in SecureShare, our new data-sharing tool for audits. Starting Sept. 1, SecureShare will be our primary tool for exchanging audit information with state and local governments.

As part of our transition, we are in the process of emailing clients with invitations to join their dedicated share space in SecureShare. The invitation email will be from SAOSecureShare [at] sao [dot] wa [dot] gov. Please add this email address to your organization's “safe sender” list to ensure you receive it.

The Office of the Washington State Auditor is excited to announce the addition of school district financial data to our Financial Intelligence Tool (FIT). Before we make this data available to the public, we are inviting school districts to preview their data and become familiar with how to use the tool.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Aug. 8, 2022

OLYMPIA – The Office of the Washington State Auditor's annual audit of federal money spent in the state revealed 61 areas of concern across 21 federal programs. Because of a lack of documentation, auditors were unable to audit one entire program, calling into question at least $271 million in spending.

These issues and more can be found today in an accessible summary of the extensive audit report by the State Auditor's Office (SAO).

Here is a printable version of the infographic.

SAO's resource database offers dozens of free guides, checklists, best practices and tools to help Washington governments improve their internal controls, grant management, procurement practices, financial reporting and cybersecurity. And last week, we replaced it with something better!