Iberville Parish Council audit released

BATON ROUGE – The Louisiana Legislative Auditor's website released an audit on the Iberville Parish Council this week prepared by contracted certified public accountants.

The document includes the comprehensive annual financial report for the fiscal year ended Dec. 31, 2012.

Louisiana law requires that all general-purpose local governments publish within six months of the close of each fiscal year a complete set of financial statements presented in conformity with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and audited in accordance with GAAP and audited in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards by a firm of licensed certified public accountants.

Finance director Randall W. Dunn prepared the report and Baxley and Associates, LLC performed the audit.

The Iberville Parish Council provides a full range of services, including fire protection, construction and maintenance of parish streets, drainage, substance abuse prevention and treatment programs, animal control, mosquito abatement, emergency services and tourism information.

The annual budget serves as the foundation of the Iberville Parish Council's financial planning and control. All agencies of the Iberville Parish Council are required to submit requests for appropriation to the government's finance director.

The independent auditor's report on internal control did not report material weaknesses or significant deficiencies but did identify certain deficiencies in internal control.

They include bank reconciliations, timely payment of invoices and inventory.

The Iberville Parish Library did not perform monthly bank reconciliations and paid several invoices that were dated in 2010 and 2011 that were not included in accounts payable at the end of 2011. The Iberville Parish Utility Department also failed to maintain a system of tracking inventory.

Management has begun to work with the Iberville Parish Finance department on the development of a more modern financial accounting system database that simplifies the bank

reconciliation process and will implement a process of keying in invoices as they come in.

A computerized inventory system is also scheduled to be implemented by Oct. 1.