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The Audit Connection Blog

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K&P leadership series: Modeling the way

December 8, 2021

In our blog series over these past months, we’ve explored four of the five behaviors described in The Leadership Challenge, James Kouzes and Barry Posner’s book on exemplary leadership practices. These four behaviors—shared visioning, enabling others, challenging processes, and encouraging hearts—have one specific thing in common: They ask you to take action in your leadership, such as developing certain skills, recognizing others, or increasing personal interactions.

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World premiere: ‘Fish Tank,’ the limited series

December 7, 2021

Today marks the premiere of the Center for Government Innovation’s limited series, “Fish Tank,” on SAO’s Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn pages. This year, the Center took a new approach to its annual fall outreach to local governments with a four-episode parody of the reality television series, “Shark Tank.”

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Removing the mystery: How auditors select federal programs for audit

December 7, 2021

Governments that spend $750,000 or more in federal awards during their fiscal year must receive a Single Audit to determine their compliance with certain federal requirements. If your government has received a Single Audit—either annually or at some point in the past—you might have wondered how your auditor selected federal programs for audit.

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Lack of subrecipient monitoring is leading to an increase in audit issues. Learn what you can do today

November 30, 2021

Earlier this summer, SAO published an article on subrecipient monitoring with information on the various requirements. But as governments continue to make subawards using funds from the Coronavirus Relief Fund or the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund, we want to emphasize some important points your government should keep in mind so you can avoid audit issues in the future.

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BARS Manuals updates starting Dec. 13

November 29, 2021

The State Auditor’s Office will start the annual process of updating the BARS Manuals (GAAP and Cash) on Monday, Dec. 13, 2021. During the updates, sections of both online BARS Manuals will be unavailable for your use. Once updated, they will be fully available for accounting and reporting guidance related to fiscal year 2021 and forward.

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How to prevent ACH and bank fraud

November 18, 2021

Automated Clearing House (ACH) frauds have been on the rise for a while, and we want to tell you some simple steps you can take to properly verify ACH and payroll bank account changes before making changes.

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Beware of employee fraud in the digital payment age

November 17, 2021

Local governments are moving away from traditional paper checks to more efficient and lower-cost digital payments, like direct deposit, automated clearinghouse (ACH) payments, electronic funds transfers (EFT), and wire payments. And the benefits are clear: You can pay a variety of vendors seamlessly, process employee payroll faster, and easily transfer funds between multiple bank accounts.

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