CCSD audit gives clean bill of health

A clean bill of health for Crook County School District’s finances this year was marred only by a single flagged item that turns up regularly in audit reports penned for small governmental entities.

Leo Riley & Co. found just one deficiency within the district’s accounting, involving the separation of duties. This is a problem that has often appeared over the years on audits performed for Crook County’s towns, boards and the county.

“Separation of duties requires that someone other than the employee responsible for safeguarding the asset must maintain the accounting records for that asset. When an organization separates duties of the employees; it minimizes the probability of an error or irregularity occurring and not being timely detected,” states the finding.

Because the accounting department is small within CCSD, there is limited opportunity to adequately separate duties over some transaction cycles.

“While we recognize that it is impractical for the School District to achieve complete separation of duties over all transaction cycles within the School District, it is important that the Board be aware of the chance that errors and irregularities may not be timely detected,” states the finding.

The district’s response to this finding was that duties have been separated to the fullest possible extent and compensating controls have been implemented to monitor accounting activities.

The problem was listed in the audit as a significant deficiency, which is an item considered important enough to merit attention by the board.

Outside of this common and ongoing problem, the auditors found no issues and described CCSD as being in a good financial position.