Municipalities and Governments

Roselli, Clark & Associates is a prominent provider of services to municipal entities within Massachusetts. The Firm specializes in audit and attestation services for financial and compliance reporting purposes, as well as advisory services for financial or operations management. The government division is the larger of the two core industries serviced since the inception of the firm in 1988.

Annual Financial Statement Audits

The annual basic financial statement audit is the primary accounting service requested by municipal entities, as many of them are required or directed to have an audit performed if any one of the following is met:

1) The entity has greater than $10,000,000 in qualified registered public debt issuances.
2) The entity expended greater than $750,000 in federal grants during the fiscal year.
3) The entity has a local bylaw or ordinance that requires an audit.
4) The entity has adopted an audit as a good business practice.

We believe the most efficient and professional manner in which a firm should conduct these highly complicated and specialized audits is by placing qualified teams of individuals at the client site to perform onsite fieldwork. In doing so, questions may be resolved more efficiently by our team leaders. Our audit teams are always led by an individual who is a Certified Public Accountant, and who has no less than 20 years of experience with auditing and accounting, most of which has been dedicated to the municipal sector.

The Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada (GFOA) awards a Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting. This is a very prestigious award and in order to be awarded a Certificate of Achievement, a government must publish an easily readable and efficiently organized comprehensive annual financial report. This report must satisfy both generally accepted accounting principles and applicable legal requirements. Since 2010, RC&A has assisted a number of clients with the implementation or filing of ACFR reports and is pleased that all client submissions to date have been awarded the Certificate of Achievement. Furthermore, multiple team members at RC&A are also active participants in the GFOA – ACFR program as special reviewers. This encompasses reviewing and reporting on ACFR submissions for municipalities across the United States.

Compliance Reporting Services

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) mandates that municipal entities expending over $750,000 of federal grant funds in a fiscal year have a Single Audit performed to report on whether grant compliance and internal controls related thereto meet the requirements promulgated under Uniform Guidance and specific grant awarding departments of the federal government. We have extensive experience and training in the performance of Single Audit services to Massachusetts municipalities and are highly qualified to meet your Single Audit reporting needs.

Additionally, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), has been expanding on their reliance for CPA firms to provide annual and cyclical Agreed-Upon Procedures (AUP) reporting of school departments and districts. Schools are required to engage an independent CPA to review specific reporting amounts and activity operations for accuracy and compliance with guidelines issued by the DESE relative to the schools’ End-of-Year Financial Report and Student Activity Accounts. Our firm has a focused involvement with these services, particularly as it related to the development of the Student Activity Accounts compliance requirements as our Managing Partner acted as the primary author of the guidelines. Accordingly, engaging our firm to perform these services for your schools ensures that you have procured a leading firm to complete your compliance reporting.

Advisory Services

Our firm members have extensive skills related to the operational activities of local municipalities. Accordingly, we are engaged on a regular basis by various communities to conduct operations analysis and evaluations, accounting assistance services, and interim financial services. We believe that our efforts in these areas provide highly valuable support in helping maintain or re-establish efficient operations and even ascertain areas where a community could benefit from modifying current procedural or system inefficiencies and mitigate the risks associated with fraud and waste of public funds. Many times our services result in the identification of additional revenues or cost savings that positively impact the burdens of maintaining a balanced budget.

Approach to Audit Services

We use the Practitioners Publishing Company’s (PPC) Guide to Audits of Local Governments to assist us in designing and performing our audit processes for financial statement audits. When a Single Audit is required, a combination of the OMB’s annually updated federal grant compliance supplements and PPC’s Guide to Single Audits are integrated into our planning, performance, and reporting of grant compliance. PPC guides are nationally recognized as the industry standard, and ensure that our accounting and reporting services are fully compliant with professional standards promulgated by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and accounting principles established by the Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB).

We are confident that by engaging our services for your municipal accounting and attestation needs, you will receive a superior level of service and attention. Furthermore, your financial management personnel will recognize the value added benefits that our highly knowledgeable and skilled teams will produce to advance the effectiveness and efficiency of your financial operations.