Guidelines for expedited reviews by the Special Review Committee (SRC): new guidelines streamline the review process for GFOA's certificate program.

• Author: Murchison, Gail
• Position: Best Practices - Government Finance Officers Association

Each year members of the Special Review Committee (SRC) review more than 3,500 comprehensive annual financial reports (CAFRs) submitted to the GFOA's Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting Program (COA). Recently, the COA improved its review process with new guidelines for SRC members. The new Guidelines for Expedited Reviews are designed to save reviewers' time and reduce redundancy

In the past, SRC members used the same checklist as the financial statement preparers. Over the years, as GASB introduced numerous new accounting standards, the checklist became quite lengthy In addition, the preparer checklist includes many items that are purely factual in nature. Each CAFR submitted to the COA receives reviews by both GFOA staff and the SRC. Staff can generate comments on any deficiencies that are purely factual in nature without input from the SRC. By using the new guidelines, SRC members will no longer spend many hours duplicating the efforts of staff reviewers.

GFOA developed the new guidelines to enable SRC members to focus their limited time on the more substantial aspects of the reports they review, with the full assurance that other more routine aspects will be fully covered as part of the staff review. This abbreviated form of the preparer checklist includes the questions from the checklist that are analytical in nature to better utilize the expertise of the SRC while simultaneously reducing the amount of time required to complete a review. Questions related to new GASB pronouncements are also included in the guidelines since many deficiencies in a CAFR will be related to the implementation of the new pronouncements.

In addition, the format of the new guidelines is more user friendly Explanations that will aid the SRC member in answering specific questions immediately follow those questions.

Reaction from reviewers to the new guidelines has been positive. Shawn McCauley, expenditure review supervisor of the State of Missouri, said "This is a great idea! I really appreciate the focus on substantive items on the list. It should help with review time of these CAFRs and still hit the important areas"

Guidelines for Expedited Review are available for reviews of general purpose governments, school districts, standalone business-type activities, and postemployment benefit systems (PERS and OPEB). The Guidelines are available on the Forms page of the GFOA's...