Office of the Legislative Auditor - Financial Audit Division

Report Summary
Internal Controls Over Statewide Financial Reporting

 

Financial Audit Division Report 17-05

Released February 16, 2017

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Annually, the Department of Management and Budget prepares the State of Minnesota’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report. Included in that report are the state’s basic financial statements for the past fiscal year. To prepare the statements, the Department of Management and Budget uses information from a variety of sources, including information provided by other agencies. Our audit of the state’s financial statements for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2016, resulted in an opinion on the basic financial statements, providing assurance that the statements are fairly stated, in all material respects, in accordance with generally accepted government accounting principles.

As part of our audit, we reviewed the state’s internal controls over its financial reporting process and its compliance with legal requirements related to financial reporting. While the state resolved the internal control findings related to its financial reporting process from our previous audit,¹ it had a significant deficiency in its internal controls over financial reporting during the current audit.

Finding

• The Board of Water and Soil Resources and the departments of Corrections and Public Safety did not have adequate controls to ensure they properly identified accounts payable liabilities.

Audit Scope

We audited the state’s financial statements for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2016. Our audit scope included many large state agencies that had financial activities significant to the financial statements.

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¹ Office of the Legislative Auditor’s Financial Audit Division Report 16-05, Internal Controls Over Statewide Financial Reporting, issued February 11, 2016.