Financial Services

Accounting Guidance

The intent is to help all County departments understand as much as possible about finance-related laws, rules, and other requirements. The purpose is to accommodate financial changes required, needed, or desired by all County departments through the provision of assistance with accounting, budgeting, and purchasing tasks. Through proper accounting and stewardship of public monies as promulgated in Article 3 of North Carolina General Statutes Chapter 159, also cited as the Local Government Budget and Fiscal Control Act (LGBFCA), the citizens gain confidence in the County government. This action ensures accountability.

• the accounting system should provide the County Manager and all department managers with data needed to ascertain financial performance, to plan and budget future activities with projected resources, to determine whether budget and program decisions have been effective, and to verify compliance with management controls.
• the accounting system should provide the investment community reliable information to assess the County's financial condition and to meet continuing requirements for disclosing certain information.
• the accounting system should provide the Local Government Commission (a state regulatory agency that oversees all financial activity of the County) sufficient information to determine whether the County has complied with legal requirements regulating accounting and finance.
• the accounting system should provide sufficient information to allow federal and state grantor agencies to monitor compliance with the requirements of the financial assistance programs that they administer.
• the accounting system should provide the public and the media dependable information for evaluation of the County's activities.
• the accounting system must be formed in response to generally accepted accounting principles set by the nation-wide Governmental Accounting Standards Board, rules and regulations of the Local Government Commission, and the County's own needs and capabilities.

• establish accounting funds to group certain government activities in an effort to isolate information for legal and management purposes.
• show in detail the County's assets, liabilities, equities, revenues, and expenditures.
• record estimated revenues and actual revenues under governmental accounting rules.
• record appropriations (a.k.a. budget for expenditures) and actual expenditures under governmental accounting rules.
• record encumbrances and other obligations for incomplete orders for goods and services and convert such obligations to expenditures at time of payment.
• provide a record of each purchase and each disposition of capital asset items in sufficient detail to establish maintenance and replacement schedules for equipment and to assist in determining the proper level of fire and hazard insurance needed for buildings and other capital asset items.
• provide the needed information from the County's accounting system (see the separate list sbove that identifies the needed capabilities of the accounting system).

• budget and spend public monies, regardless of their source, only for public purposes per Article V, Section 2(l), of the North Carolina Constitution.
• spend public monies, regardless of their source, only when sufficient budget exists to meet the obligation.
• annually adopt a budget ordinance that coincides with the County's fiscal year that begins on July 1 (G.S. 159-13).
• use the budget ordinance to levy taxes and appropriate revenues for specified functions and to allocate resources rationally (G.S. 159-7(b)(2).
• record the original budget from the budget ordinance and all subsequent budget amendments as part of the County's accounting records.
• report any non-compliance with the County's adopted budget in the annual financial and compliance report (the budget ordinance and subsequent amendments are legal documents that set limits on spending).
• balance estimated revenues to appropriations by fund in the budget ordinance and all subsequent budget amendments.
• do not budget for revenues and expenditures in the County's agency funds where revenues equal expenditures, assets equal liabilities, and the County does not retain any equity.