Compliance checklist & frequently asked questions
Work through the checklist below to gauge audit readiness, see the documents your auditor will actually ask for, and browse answers to the questions we hear most from Georgia finance officers and clerks.
Audit readiness checklist
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Documents to have on hand
Auditors call this the "PBC" (prepared-by-client) list. Gathering these before fieldwork starts is the single biggest lever for keeping your audit or AUP engagement on schedule and under budget — missing records are the most common cause of delays.
Skip the spreadsheet — upload directly to your secure vault
Our Client Portal gives your organization its own private, encrypted document vault mapped to these exact categories. Only your organization's logins can see your files — access is enforced by row-level security, not just a login screen — and every upload, download, and deletion is logged.
Open the Client Portal →General Ledger & Trial Balance
- Year-end trial balance for every fund
- General ledger detail and chart of accounts
- All adjusting and closing journal entries
- Interfund transfer and due to/due from schedules
Bank & Investment Records
- Bank statements and reconciliations for every account through year-end
- Investment and CD/pooled-investment statements
- Collateralization documentation for public deposits
- Outstanding check lists and voided-check logs
Budget Documents
- Adopted original budget and all amendments
- Budget-to-actual reports for every fund
- Governing body minutes approving the budget and amendments
Governance & Legal
- Minutes of all governing body meetings for the fiscal year
- Charter, bylaws, or enabling legislation
- Insurance policies (property, liability, public officials, fidelity/crime bond)
- Attorney representation letter and litigation/claims summary
- Major contracts and intergovernmental agreements
Capital Assets & Long-Term Debt
- Capital asset ledger (additions, disposals, depreciation)
- Construction-in-progress detail
- Lease agreements (GASB 87)
- Debt schedules, amortization tables, and debt service to maturity
- Bond covenants, official statements, and continuing disclosure filings
Payroll & Benefits
- Payroll registers and year-end W-2s/1099s
- Pension (GASB 68) and OPEB (GASB 75) reports from your plan administrator
- Compensated absence / leave balance schedules
- Employment contracts for key officials, if applicable
Revenue Support
- Property tax digest and collection detail
- SPLOST collections and project-by-project expenditure ledger
- Hotel/Motel tax collections and use-of-funds documentation
- Franchise fee, license, and permit revenue detail
- Utility billing and accounts receivable aging
Federal Grants (if Single Audit applies)
- Grant award letters and agreements for every federal program
- Support for the Schedule of Expenditures of Federal Awards (SEFA)
- Procurement records for grant-funded purchases
- Subrecipient monitoring documentation, if funds were passed through
Payables & Prior-Year Items
- Accounts payable aging and outstanding invoices at year-end
- Accrued liability support (payroll, compensated absences, claims)
- Prior-year audit report and management letter
- Status/evidence of corrective action on prior-year findings
General storage & retention practices
Whatever system you use, records containing financial data or PII should sit behind access controls (unique logins, role-based permissions, an audit trail of who viewed or changed a file) and be backed up somewhere offsite or in the cloud, encrypted at rest and in transit. Keep signed originals of governance documents (minutes, bonds, contracts) in a fireproof, locked location. Retention periods are set by Georgia's local government records retention schedules — published by the Georgia Archives — and vary by record type, so confirm the applicable schedule before destroying anything.
Not sure what applies to your entity?
Not every category applies to every local government — a small city with no federal awards, for example, can skip the Single Audit documentation entirely. We can review your fund structure and hand you a PBC list scoped to exactly what your auditor will ask for.
Frequently asked questions
No. Under O.C.G.A. § 36-81-7, a full audit is required only if your population exceeds 1,500 or annual expenditures reach $550,000. Smaller entities below both thresholds may elect agreed-upon procedures (AUP) instead, though the governing body can still choose a full audit voluntarily.
Late or missing filings can affect your eligibility for certain state grants and assistance programs, and DOAA tracks compliance status publicly. If you’re behind, the priority is getting current as quickly as possible — we help clients catch up on multiple prior years when needed.
A Single Audit is a federally required audit of compliance with the terms of federal grants, triggered when an entity expends $1,000,000 or more in federal awards in a fiscal year (2 CFR 200.501, as revised by OMB in 2024). It's performed alongside — not instead of — your regular O.C.G.A. § 36-81-7 audit.
Generally, no. DOAA's submission requirements specify that reports cannot carry an adverse opinion or disclaimer of opinion. If your auditor is heading toward one of these outcomes, address the underlying issue (often incomplete records or unresolved reconciliations) before the engagement concludes.
Most local authorities (housing, development, water/sewer, hospital) and special districts are subject to the same O.C.G.A. § 36-81-7 framework, though some are also component units reported within a parent government's financial statements. We help determine your specific reporting structure.
At minimum: closed and reconciled books, a trial balance for every fund, capital asset and debt schedules, bank reconciliations, and any grant or SPLOST supporting schedules. Most CPA firms will issue a formal "PBC" (prepared-by-client) list — we help clients work through it efficiently.
Working through the checklist and hit a snag?
We’re happy to look at where you stand and tell you plainly what’s left to do.