Restricted revenues, such as lottery, federal title funds and special education funds, are allotted to schools with specific spending requirements and purpose assigned to their use. Therefore, it is extremely important that these expenditures are captured and recorded appropriately so that reporting on the use of the funds is accurate and the school will not be asked to return any revenue.
One way to ensure that we capture all restricted funds’ expenditures is to review carefully the “Labor Distribution Payroll Report” that is emailed from the Payroll Department with each payroll “pre-register”. The coding string can be found within this report for each employee so that you can identify and verify where each employee’s salary and related expenses are coded. If you are unfamiliar with this report, please reach out to your Account Manager. They will be more than happy to walk you through how to read and understand this Labor Distribution Report. We can also provide a PER40 report, which indicates all current employee coding for your review.
Another way to ensure that restricted funds’ expenses are properly allocated, is to identify them initially when sending them to your Account Manager for processing. This would mean identifying them as a restricted fund expense when sending Invoice Allocation spreadsheets and Credit or Debit Card Allocation spreadsheets. This is considered a Best Business Practice and will keep the school’s books looking as clean as possible. We realize that sometimes the school employee sending these spreadsheets and invoices to the CSMC Account Manager is not the same staff that develops the budget and, therefore, may not be aware of a planned or budgeted restricted expenditure. We strongly advise that someone from the staff, who is aware of budgeted expenses, review these documents before sending them to CSMC.
Please review your transactions periodically in Charter Vision and notify your Account Manager of any reclassifications that are needed. Now especially, is a crucial time to do a thorough review of expenditure coding, so that we may move anything necessary before year end. Once the year is closed and unaudited actual reports are submitted, we are unable to reclassify expenses under a restricted spending category. Remember that you can compare your budget to actual numbers in Charter Vision, which may be helpful in identifying expected restricted funds expenses.
If you have any questions about this, please do not hesitate to contact your School Business Manager or Account Manager. We look forward to a smooth year-end closing with your school.
