Auditing CPA saved a city thousands by outsourcing to Aplos.

Challenge

When the small city of Leon, Kansas hired April Swartz, Principal CPA, CGFM, and CNAP to perform a routine audit, she quickly encountered issues that made it difficult to complete the audit.

The City of Leon had been using QuickBooks, accounting software not optimized for fund accounting, so the cash balances for funds were difficult to determine. Leon's bank accounts had also not been reconciled for the past two years, which posed an additional challenge for Swartz's audit. Should April have not been able to find assistance from an outside source, it may have meant many more hours of work for her and possibly termination of the audit, which would have cost the firm $21,600.

It was clear to Swartz that the City of Leon needed help from a fund accounting expert before she could begin the audit.

To complete the audit, the City of Leon needed an outside consultant to help migrate the city to true fund accounting software, rework their chart of accounts, and work with the city to allocate two years of data. She considered referring Leon to a variety of outside sources, but the typical options were impractical for a small city, with rates of up to $125 dollars an hour, or more.

Ultimately, Swartz would refer them to Aplos.

Why Aplos?

• Company specializes in fund accounting software for nonprofits and churches.
• Provides bookkeeping services.
• Additional features include an integrated donor management platform.

Solution

Swartz decided to refer the City of Leon to Aplos' online fund accounting software and bookkeeping services after learning about the company at the Rainmaker Conference. Swartz wanted to provide a solu­tion that could solve the immediate need of the audit, as well as the city's long-term goal - to have a system they could understand and use for solid fund accounting, with ongoing support.

"The cost is very doable too-usually software made for cities is very costly."

Aplos tailored an Advanced Accounting package specifically to their city's accounting needs. It offered every­ thing they were looking for, including powerful features like:

• Budget by Fund - Compares budget to actual for each fund
• Advanced Reporting - Builds custom financial reports by project, campaign, or department
• Automatic Recurring Transactions - Schedules regular occurring transactions to post in their register
• Payroll Integration - Payroll services provided by Sage payroll that are easily imported into the accounting as journal entries

What happened next

Swartz passed the referral to Aplos, and Aplos worked directly with the City of Leon to assess their needs and build a new chart of accounts.

The City of Leon mailed hardcopy bank statements for six bank accounts, spanning two years of data, in addition to a QuickBooks export.

The Aplos Services team imported all of the QuickBooks data into Aplos and reallocated the data to match the new chart of accounts based on the reporting needs of the city.
The Aplos team then completed two years of bank reconciliations and made any necessary corrections.

The last step was to use the most recent audit report to fill in the gaps of the City of Leon's remaining assets and liabilities, as well as their beginning-of-the-year fund balances.

The City of Leon was very involved with the Aplos Services team each step of the way, helping Aplos understand the nature of every fund and transaction, in order to reclassify those transactions.

Download the City of Leon case study (PDF).

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