Category: Basics

Contracts in a Nutshell

I shouldn’t keep being surprised when I run into ill-defined processes for contracts. My experience is that clarity in this area is the exception rather than the rule. Small districts may have no purchasing department. In such cases the Chief Business Officer (CBO) owns the process directly. In larger districts he or she will have a purchasing supervisor, manager or director. The CBO

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Lottery Budgeting Basics (California)

This post, another in the “Basics” series, is designed to fill in some of the gaps that can exist for new employees in school finance. I remember when I first started at a school district and was confused by the fact that the attendance data used in Lottery revenue calculations seemed to bear no resemblance to actual ADA. Also, the

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Personnel Costs for Negotiations

Have you ever been in this situation? The lead negotiator for the district says that they need those calculations for the cost of a 1% raise and the cost of one day of salary. Negotiations are starting in 10 minutes. You get that frozen look on your face because this is the first time you

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Indirect Costs: The Basics

What are indirect costs? Imagine your district has received a reading grant.  The grantor is providing funding for a teacher and instructional materials.  Indirect costs are all those additional costs associated with running the grant.  These will be hiring costs for the teacher, including recruitment, fingerprinting, and credential analysis.  When the teacher puts in an order for

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Bank Reconciliation

Continuing my occasional series on “the basics” this post addresses something I almost skipped, thinking it was perhaps too basic. Then I worked with an employee who reconciles the district’s clearing account, cafeteria account and student body accounts. I realized that the concept of bank reconciliation might be foreign to younger employees.  Growing up in the era of

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When Your Chart of Accounts Gets Out of Hand

Is your school district’s chart of accounts not working for you? Here are some questions to ask when designing a new one.

Indirect Costs When Revenue is not Fixed

I wrote about the so called magic formula for budgeting indirect costs on a fixed amount grant.  This calculation uses the grant revenue amount to determine how much of the grant you can budget to spend and how much needs to be set aside for indirect costs. However it is important to remember – actual indirect

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Carryover Complications

Say a school is allotted $20,000 (with carryover allowed) and they only spent $15,000.  The carryover amount is: a) $5,000 b) something else Often the answer is b) “something else” This is because the central office will usually give the school site the net award amount – i.e. the award minus the indirect cost on the

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What’s Your Sign?

How might you introduce a new accounting employee to an unfamiliar financial system?  First of all, you might want to warn them about any quirks in how the system shows signs. There are two ways to display signs:  Normal and Debit /Credit. Currently I am working with a system that mixes both in the same report.  I know!  I know!  You

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Grants, Entitlements, and Carryover

When I started working at a California school district one of the first things I had to learn was the difference between a grant and an entitlement. A few years ago the state accounting manual was revised to refer to funding sources (resources) as either those with a fund balance or those with unearned revenue and no fund balance.

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