Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

The Virginia Certified Public Accountant firm Robinson, Farmer, Cox Associates rendered an unmodified opinion on the town of Windsor’s fiscal year 2024 financial statements, which is the ideal outcome of an audit.

Aaron Hawkins, an RFC representative, shared details of the audit with the Windsor Town Council at its meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 12.

“The audit process went great,” he said, noting that Windsor Treasurer Cheryl McClanahan and other members of the town’s staff did a great job preparing for RFC. “It makes for a very efficient audit process — can’t thank them enough for all the work that they do.”

He highlighted a few key pages of the audit presentation as he spoke on Tuesday.

“I always start on page one of the report, which is our auditor’s report, and it contains our opinion on the financial statements, and it’s an unmodified opinion, which for auditors is the best opinion that we can give,” he said. “If it were a modified opinion, it would mean that we changed some language in here to say, ‘Everything was OK, but…’ — that would be a modified opinion. 

“But this is what we call an unmodified,” he continued, “which means it’s the very standard audit opinion that says, ‘Based on the testing that we did, these financial statements can be relied upon, based on the audit work that we’ve done.’”

Hawkins then addressed the town’s General Fund balance.

“You began the year with about $2.7 million, ended the year with about $3.9 million in fund balance,” he said, adding that this was just less than a $1.2 million increase for the year.

He then drew council members’ attention to a report on control testing and compliance work that RFC did with the town.

“If we had any findings to report based on those control testings that we do and compliance work, we would report that here,” he said. “We do not have any findings to report based on the audit work, controls testing and compliance work that we’ve done.”

Hawkins then highlighted a new part of the audit for this year.

“The town had over $750,000 of federal assistance during the year, the utilization of the (American Rescue Plan Act) funding that took place this year,” he said. “You received the money — probably most of that — in previous years, but you spent it this year, so that’s when we actually recognized that revenue in the period in which it’s spent in.”

This spending by the town triggered a single audit.

U.S. Department of the Treasury documentation states that single audits are required from all recipients who expend $750,000 or more in aggregate federal financial assistance within their fiscal year.

“So we had to do federal compliance work and issued this report and an opinion on the federal compliance work that we did,” Hawkins said. “And we had an unmodified opinion there as well. We had no federal findings to report based on the testing that we did for the ARPA program.”

At the conclusion of his audit presentation, Hawkins noted that he did not issue any separate management letter this year.

“Again, I thought everything went really well,” he said. “Pleasure to work on the audit and glad to answer any questions that you have for me.”

There were no questions from the council.

Mayor George Stubbs said, “I thank you for your presentation and the audit, and I think we need to give our treasurer a round of applause for the job that she’s done this year and the audit that we went through.”

Council members, town staff, Hawkins and people in attendance at the meeting promptly offered applause for McClanahan.