Disclaimers
I’m not an expert; I’m just a random PTA Treasurer in San Francisco. This document is not endorsed by any official anything. This was written in 2019; if you’re reading this in some other year, things may have changed.
This document is very specific to the PTAEZ accounting system.
This document has examples drawn from my school specifically; they may not apply to your situation.
Notes
Things shown in green are additional notes or commentary; you can probably run the procedure without them.
Introduction
Most of the audit follows the audit checklist, but at the end you have to produce an audit report that is not based on the checklist; at least not directly.
The actual audit report and checklist forms, including an annotated version of the checklist that helps explain things, is at the 2nd district PTA site.
The goal of the audit report is to compare what PTAEZ believes is true with what actually happened to your money (i.e. in your bank accounts). PTAEZ is concerned with transactions in the abstract, so they don’t always show the same thing.
If you’ve been doing your monthly bank reconciliations in PTAEZ, and paying attention to them to notice things like “Hey there’s a large deposit recorded in PTAEZ but it doesn’t seem to have shown up in the bank!” or whatever, the audit report should be simple and straightforward, as it’s basically a roll-up of the reconciliations.
A thing that confused us is that one of the lines says “BALANCE in checking account [as of date]”, but this does not mean “how much money do you have in your account?”, it means “how much money would you have if all outstanding transactions cleared?”. Which is why it’s a different number than “Last BANK STATEMENT balance [on that same date]”.
Another thing that’s important to note is that if you’re tracking more than one bank account in PTAEZ, you need to prepare a separate audit report for each bank account.
Collect Things You Need
- The Treasurer’s Report from PTAEZ for the time period in question. (Be very very sure you’ve got the dates right, or this won’t work and you’ll be very confused.)
- The last bank statement for the audit period, for all accounts.
- The Reconciliation Report for the last month for the period in question for all accounts you track in PTAEZ (Tools -> Bank Recon History; to get a proper report click Print and check Include Detail).
- It’s not normally required, but you may find it helpful to have all the bank statements for audit period handy, for all accounts, and similarly all Reconciliation Reports.
The Actual Procedure
The important part of the Audit Report is the part in the middle with all the blank dollar values to fill out. This part is broadly divided into two sections; the part from “BALANCE ON HAND at time of last audit” to “BALANCE ON HAND” represents your book-keeping system’s view of your money, and the “BANK RECONCILIATION” section (ending with “BALANCE in checking account”) represents your bank account’s view of your money.
- Start with the “Dates covered by this Audit” line. This is usually either 1 July YYYY through 31 December YYYY, or 1 January YYYY through 30 June YYYY. If your fiscal year doesn’t end on 30 June, you’ll need to use date ranges that match the first and last 6 months of your fiscal year.
- Audit Report’s “BALANCE ON HAND at time of last audit [start date]” = Treasurer’s Report “Balance On Hand [start date]”
- NOTE: This amount MUST match the last Audit Report’s “Balance On Hand [end date]”, or something has gone very wrong. Do not continue until you have confirmed those numbers match, or you know exactly why they don’t. If you know why they don’t match and you can’t fix it, attach a note explaining the situation to the Audit Report.
- If you’ve never done an audit before, find your bank balance from the last statement before the current audit period, add any outstanding income, subtract any outstanding payments.
- Audit Report’s “RECEIPTS since last audit” = Treasurer’s Report “Total Deposits”
- Audit Report’s “TOTAL” = Add up the last two lines
- Audit Report’s “DISBURSEMENTS since last audit” = Treasurer’s Report “Total Disbursements”
- Audit Report’s “BALANCE ON HAND [end date]” = Subtract the Disbursements line from the Total line
- The “Last BANK STATEMENT balance” should come from your Bank Statement as of the last day of this Audit period, or, if the Statements end on a different day of the month, the first one following the last day of this Audit period.
- “DEPOSITS not yet credited” should come from the Treasurer’s Report, listing only those deposits that have not yet appeared on a Bank Statement.
- See below for how to figure this out relatively quickly
- You’re supposed to enumerate all entries here; fill free to simply write “see attached” and attach the relevant Reconciliation Report, which you should do anyway. Highlight the relevant entries or something.
- “CHECKS OUTSTANDING” should come from the Treasurer’s Report, listing only those checks that have not yet appeared on a Bank Statement.
- See below for how to figure this out relatively quickly
- You’re supposed to enumerate all entries here; fill free to simply write “see attached” and attach the relevant Reconciliation Report, which you should do anyway. Highlight the relevant entries or something.
- “TOTAL outstanding checks” is just all of the outstanding cheques added up, obviously.
- The “BALANCE in checking account” line is the “Last BANK STATEMENT balance” plus “DEPOSITS not yet credited” minus “TOTAL outstanding checks”
- The “BALANCE in checking account” line MUST match the “BALANCE ON HAND [end date]” from the previous section. If it does not, something has gone wrong and you need to figure that out.
- To figure out which of the deposits and disbursements listed on the Treasurer’s Report have not yet appeared on a bank statement, you can use the list you’ve already gathered as part of the audit process, or:
- Get the Reconciliation Report for the last month for the period in question (see “Collect Things You Need” for instructions).
- Use the list of “Uncleared Transactions: Deposited Receipts” for the “DEPOSITS not yet credited” section and use “Uncleared Transactions: Checks and Other Disbursements” for the “CHECKS OUTSTANDING” section.
- Note that the Reconciliation Reports will sometimes have uncleared transactions from a time period after the auditing period; simply ignore those. It just means that you entered transactions between the end of the month and the time you ran the reconciliation.
- Attach every report, bank statement, etc you used to fill out the Audit Report, as well as the Audit Checklist, to the Audit Report.