Budget and Accounting Practice
Keeping track of budgets, funding, commitments and expenditures in a large capital outlay program can become very complicated. In one case, a struggling school district came to us because it was close to forfeiting $97 million in state school facility funding because it had not tracked expenditures or filed reports to the state. CPM staff stepped in, found records (often stored in warehouses), negotiated a time extension with the state, prepared the reports and recovered the money.
In another instance, a district had spent over $100 million in four years, yet was woefully unaware of its fund balances, commitments, budgets, and the dire consequences of such failure. Amid investigation from both the local newspaper and citizens’ oversight committee, the district was unable to effectively respond to fraud allegations and came to CPM for help. After six months of forensic accounting, CPM produced a report showing future commitments, budgets, cash flow, anticipated revenue and the status of every dollar spent on every project.
