1. To provide appropriate management with explanations of significant variations between budgeted and actual financial status, the College provides "Monthly Account Statements" and "Reports of Transactions" to budget administrators and their supervisors (i.e., second readers).
   
   Budgetary control is the assignment of responsibility and the measurement of results to achieve a forecast goal or objective. Budgetary control is one of the mechanisms used by the College to guide, regulate, and coordinate its activities and affairs. It should be exercised in varying degrees on all levels of administration and operation.
   
   Budgets define the resources that are available to achieve departmental goals. It is important that the budget be periodically compared to actual expenditures to ensure that resources are not being misused. If expenditures exceed the budget, sufficient resources will not be available later in the year. Budget administrators should research significant variances and take appropriate corrective action.
   
   
2. Budget administrators and their supervisors (i.e., second readers) must review monthly revenue and expenditure reports and reconcile them to department copies of transaction documents: 
   1. to ensure that the reports accurately include all of the department's authorized transactions;
   2. to ensure that transactions that are related to other accounts, or are unauthorized, do not appear in the department's account;
   3. to identify payments to an incorrect vendor;
   4. to identify payments for goods or services not yet received or received in another fiscal year.
      
      In addition to identifying unauthorized transactions, the process of reconciling monthly revenue and expenditure reports should include identification of transactions initiated by the department but not yet posted to the Colleague Financial System (CF) (i.e., transactions in the processing pipeline). Financial information (e.g., budget balance available) provided by the monthly reports should be adjusted to reflect the pending transactions identified, thereby providing up-to-date financial information to be used in monitoring the availability of department funds.
      
      
3. If the department maintains a separate accounting system or spreadsheet, it should be reconciled to CF each month.
   
   CF is the official accounting system of the College. If a department chooses to maintain a separate spreadsheet, it is important that the department ensure that all appropriate transactions are accurately reflected in CF so that it provides accurate information to those who rely upon it (and conversely that all appropriate transactions posted to CF are accurately reflected in the department's separate spreadsheet to ensure the integrity of information and reports generated from the department's separate spreadsheet).
   
   
4. The supervisor (i.e., second reader) should review the CF reports and take action to correct errors and answer questions.
   
   To ensure that those employees with approval authority are adequately monitored, supervisors (i.e., second readers) should satisfy themselves that the transactions that appear on departmental accounts have been properly authorized and are related to departmental objectives.
   
   
5. Vice Presidents must report total budget overruns for each CF account to the President. Significant excesses of expenditures over budget should be reflected in the responsible budget administrator's annual performance evaluation. Each Vice President will provide a report to the President by January 31 on the six months ending December 31 and by June 30 for the eleven months ending May 31.

^{This page was last updated January 06, 2003.}