Welcome to Query Of The Week

Welcome to this week’s Query Of The Week. Each week our technical team respond to a huge number of client queries and in this segment, we share with you the most common questions that keep coming up time and time again.

In this week’s Query Of The Week, Neill Doran discusses what an Accountants Report for reporting for a Primary or Secondary School Engagement might look like.

We hope you enjoy this week’s, Query Of The Week.

If this Query Of The Week was of interest to you, you will also be interested in our Primary & Voluntary Secondary Schools Financial Reporting Obligations webinar.

Full details for this online CPD course can be found below:

Webinar Duration	1.5 Hours
Fee	€38
Presenter	Neill Doran – OmniPro
Category	Financial Reporting

---

Query Of The Week – Video Transcript

(Please note that this is a direct unedited transcript of the spoken word as recorded on the video) 

Hello and welcome to this week’s Query of the Week

This week’s Query of the Week is not per say a query in its own right. What it is is going to be a little bit of a guidance for you guys out there, a bit of input and knowledge to assist you.

What it’s going to be in relation to is the upcoming FSSU reporting obligations in the context of primary and secondary schools.

So some practitioners out there are going to have to appendix a accountant’s report to their submission. Other practitioners in the event that your primary or secondary school is going to be subject to audit, then you’re going to have to do to an appendix a auditor’s report to your submission. The preparation of a set of accounts If you’re using the FSSU’s general ledger coding system, then that in its own right is a form of a agreed upon accounting framework.

It is not a fair presentation framework as we know it, an applicable financial reporting framework, i
e FRS 102, FRS 105, IRFS, et cetera. It is not a fair presentation framework, be just mindful of that fact

I’m going to show you a template accountant’s report that you might include as part of your appendix, as part of your submission of your accounts In some rare situations, your school might seek to actually have a full and proper set of accounts prepared You might include an unincorporated full set of accounts under FRS 102 but use those numbers as cascaded into the P&L balance sheet using the applicable balance financial reporting framework over FRS 102
And then through the general ledger coding system, reflect those in the FSSU report submission
Now in a situation like that, that is a rare situation, you cannot use FSR 105 because 105 is not available to unincorporated entities.

You can use 102, you can use section 1a of of 102 which is a reduced disclosures format of FRS 102, it is still the same accounting framework I am not going to show you what an FRS 102 audit report, overlaying the Educational Act obligations and reports to FSSU might look like.

If you are interested in knowing more about reporting obligations to the FSSU under primary or secondary schools, then I would encourage you to come to dot webinar on the 30th October

Now what might an accountant’s report look at at present If we look here, it’s all the fairly standard information. The key point here is, we make reference to our date of our letter of engagement, the school.

Remember, there’s a Board of Management here, it is not necessarily a Board of Directors, it’s a school’s Board of Management It is a school, we’re governed here in a accord to section 18 of the Education Act.

This is quite different than what you would normally see in context of the standard company And then down here we’re basically talking, well how we’ve been preparing these.
So if we look at this, school as asked, so the statement and financial assets and liabilities and financial position as at 31 August 2019, we’re gonna preparing in accordance with FRS 102, if we are doing 102 sets of accounts I’d like to be clear about that and or are prepared in accordance with the compliance framework as outlined by the Department of Education and Skills and the FSSU for the year ended 31 August 2019.

Key points for acknowledgment here, pushing in elements here on the Board of Management
You are responsible for determining in respect of the year whether the school meets the conditions for exemption from the audit of the financial statements as set out by Department of Education, the FSSU, the Charities Regulatory Authority and the Revenue Commissioners.

I would see this as being critical and key. I understand this is a compilation engagement, IRS 4410, N 41, M 14, tax sheet 063.

The point being here is that we have to clearly state, it is a compilation engagement. So we have the responsibility for the compiling of those financial statements.

We’re going to call out here what our governance around our obligations for compilation engagement and we are going to clearly state that this is not an insurance engagement.

And of course you can include your Baramin paragraph if necessary.

I’m Neil Dawn of Omnipro Practice Support, I hope this query of the week helps, provides you knowledge, guidance, makes you ask questions and what I wanna say to you is, if you find this information helpful, these are going to be handouts as part of the webinar on the 30th of October, including letters of engagement in respect of audit and non-audit engagements and as I said the FRS 102 opinion in context of section 18 of the Education Act.