July 2024 marked the second anniversary of my return to Cherry Bekaert after spending two years on sabbatical in Norwalk, CT, as a Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) practice fellow. I am often asked about my experience at the GASB and how that experience shaped my current role as an Advisory Director in the Firm’s Government & Public Sector Accounting Advisory practice.
A Transformative Journey at the GASB
My time at the GASB was a very rewarding and educational experience. After spending 15 years in public accounting, adjusting to the slower pace of standard setting took some time. Instead of frantically juggling dozens of clients, deadlines and personnel resources, I spent my time reading and researching.
I spent many days alone with my thoughts, contemplating the mysteries of the accounting universe. I was surrounded by brilliant accounting minds who made time for me and indulged my never-ending questions. More than anything, my experience at the GASB taught me to be curious and to pursue my curiosity, which often seemed like an impossibility or, at the very least, a luxury in public accounting.
As I developed a habit of pursuing my curiosity, I became more efficient at it. Navigating the GASB codification soon became a familiar playground. As such, familiarity with the GASB conceptual framework enabled me to guess what the correct answer in a situation probably should be prior to arriving at the actual answer in the literature. Listening to the GASB deliberate on a variety of topics gave context to the decisions that ultimately resulted in a pronouncement.
Satisfying one’s curiosity requires an understanding of the source of information and knowing where to go for an answer. This skill was further enhanced by my experience of responding to technical inquiries while at the GASB.
Any time someone submits a question on the GASB’s technical inquiry form, it gets routed to a GASB staff member identified as a subject matter expert. While at the GASB, I had the opportunity to perform research and provide responses to queries from financial statement preparers or auditors. This experience taught me not to shrink from technical questions and complexities but to meet them head-on.
Leveraging GASB Insight To Solve Government Accounting Challenges
As an Advisory Director at Cherry Bekaert, I frequently meet with finance officers who are completely overwhelmed by resource constraints. While many government organizations have the funds and/or budgets to hire qualified accounting professionals, qualified candidates are hard to find. There are fewer people available to do additional work, let alone perform routine tasks. Therefore, there certainly isn’t enough time or in-house resources to figure out how to navigate a unique transaction or figure out how to implement a new accounting pronouncement. This is where I have found that my GASB experience has been most helpful.
Here are some examples of the many requests I have received in just the last six months:
- After the creation of a finance authority, a county government needed to evaluate the financial reporting entity; whether the entity meets the criteria of a component unit, and if so, which type of presentation was required.
- A component unit of a tribal government was transferring all of its assets to another component unit (which applied FASB’s framework) of the same tribal government. The tribal government needed to know how the transaction should be reflected in its financial statements.
- A school board needed to implement GASB 96 but didn’t know where to start. It needed help navigating the pronouncement and walking it step by step through implementation.
- A special purpose government experienced a complete turnover of its accounting department. The new personnel had very limited governmental accounting experience. It needed a workshop highlighting the differences in financial reporting between the public and private sectors.
- A community college association needed to update and refresh its annual financial reporting guide, which all of its community college members use.
As a result of my experience at the GASB, I have been able to effectively address these needs and more, providing valuable support to these government organizations.
Your Guide Forward
“GASB-as-a-Service,” as we like to call it, is just one of many things our dedicated Government & Public Sector Accounting Advisory team can provide to ease the burden that finance officers face every day. Services provided as part of this offering include the following:
- New GASB Standards Implementation
- Financial Statement Closing Assistance
- Financial Statement Audit Preparation
- Single Audit Preparation
- Accounting Remediation & Support
- Financial Statement Preparation
- Training & Continuing Professional Education
- Financial & Single Audit Finding Remediation
- Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Implementation Remediation
- Chart of Accounts Development
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