The OPD5 Finance Department completed its annual independent financial audit last month. Once again the results were a clean audit with no findings of irregularities, inaccuracies or non-compliance in the district’s ledger or financial statements.
Jenna Sheehan of St. George CPA firm Hafen, Buckner, Everett and Graff presented a summary report of the audit to the OPD5 board of trustees during a meeting held March 19 in Overton. Sheehan explained that it was the responsibility of the auditors throughout this detailed process to ensure “that all financial reporting is presented in a fair manner in all material respects and that the financial position of the district is represented as it should be.”
Sheehan praised the OPD5 management team and finance staff for their cooperation and attention to detail in the audit.
“They did a fantastic job!” she told the board. “As soon as we started running down the long list of documentation that we needed, they just kept getting us those things – everything we asked for. They were very responsive and efficient in working with us. And their financial statements were in order. We had no findings.”
Sheehan added that this was especially remarkable given that most of the OPD5 finance team were all fairly new to their roles. Over the past year, some of the district’s key senior finance staff had either retired or advanced to other positions, leaving a newer group of staff to carry out the audit process.
This year’s audit was overseen by recently appointed Finance Department Manager Jonathan Denninghoff, who was hired at OPD5 just a little more than a year ago, and coordinated by Accounting Clerk Kim Watts, who had previously worked on the audit only under the supervision of senior staffer Jolene Kretschmann, who retired last fall.
“I have to admit that I was pretty nervous because this was my first year on the audit without Jolene here,” Watts said. “Plus, it was Jonathan’s first audit without Jolene as well. Even so, we were pretty determined to figure things out and make it our audit this year. We wanted it to be a clean audit.”
But despite the anxiety, Watts said that the team was also confident going into the process. This was because of the careful procedures and safeguards that they had put into place early on to prepare for it.
“Getting ready for the audit doesn’t just happen a few weeks in advance of it,” Watts said. “It is pretty much the entire year that you are preparing for the audit. Like in my role, every time that I do a journal entry, I have to make sure that it is correct and that it can be fully explained. Because if I do it wrong, it is going to come up in the audit.”
That same attention to detail was observed by all the rest of the OPD5 team in their own roles. This included accounts payable, billing, warehouse inventory, customer service interactions, line operations work orders and more, Watts said.
To prevent errors from ending up undetected on the books, a painstaking process was implemented where finance staff would regularly and carefully review one another’s work and openly communicate about any concerns that were found and possible solutions.
“When balancing the general ledger at each month-end, we are looking at every bank account, every customer service entry, accounts receivable, billing, credit card payments, ACH- just everything,” Watts said. “We are looking into all of those transactions to find any discrepancies. We want the ledger to be clean all throughout the year, and any potential issues fixed long before we present it to the auditor.”
This year-round focus brought a measure of added peace as the time for the audit approached earlier this year, Watts said.
“That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t any stress,” Watts said. “But at least we could say, ‘We have gone through the general ledger a million times, we know what is in there, we have caught our own mistakes, and we can explain everything.’ So even though we were a little nervous going in, we were pretty confident that it would be a clean audit.”
OPD5 Finance Manager Jonathan Denninghoff said that much of this first year audit success is due to the diligent past management of Kretschmann and now-CEO MeLisa Garcia who preceded Denninghoff in the Finance Manager position.
“This was my first year overseeing the OPD5 audit, and we did have some growing pains,” he said. “But, really, without the processes and procedures already in place – and having them be executed accurately, year in and year out, by MeLisa and Jolene – this would have been an extremely difficult task.”
Denninghoff also lauded the current staff for their constant attention to detail. “I am grateful for their hard work,” he said. “We could not have completed a timely audit without their efforts and determination.”