Overview
In accordance with Section 12 of Chapter 11 of the Massachusetts General Laws, the Office of the State Auditor has conducted a performance audit of Bristol Community College (BCC) Foundation for the period July 1, 2017 through June 30, 2019.
We conducted this performance audit in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.
Below is our audit objective, indicating the question we intended our audit to answer and the conclusion we reached regarding the objective.
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Objective |
Conclusion |
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Yes |
To achieve our audit objective, we gained an understanding of the internal controls that were relevant to the objective by conducting inquiries with the foundation’s executive director and accountant. Additionally, we reviewed applicable bylaws, fiscal policies, and procedures and conducted inquiries with other members of foundation management. In addition, we performed the following procedures.
Expenditures
The foundation’s accountant provided us with an expenditure transaction worksheet that contained a list of 2,098 foundation expenditures, totaling $5,661,518, for our audit period. We selected the 17 highest expenditure transactions, totaling $2,214,340, out of the population of 2,098. Then we selected a nonstatistical random sample of 63 expenditure transactions, totaling $134,387, from the remaining population. We reviewed supporting documentation, including invoices and evidence supporting receipt of purchases, for each of the 80 sampled transactions to determine whether expenditures were supported, approved, and applicable to the foundation’s mission. We also interviewed the executive director to confirm that the expenditures were related to the foundation’s mission.
Since we used a nonstatistical random sample, we did not project the results to the entire population.
Data Reliability
To ensure the completeness and accuracy of the expenditure transaction worksheet provided by the foundation’s accountant, we selected 20 transactions from the source documents and traced them to the worksheet. We also selected 20 transactions from the worksheet and traced them to the source documents. Finally, we performed additional validity and integrity tests on the data, including (1) testing for missing records or missing values in key data elements, (2) scanning for duplicate entries, (3) verifying fields to detect any data validity errors, and (4) testing for values outside a designated range.
Based on the results of these data reliability assessment procedures, we determined that the information obtained for our audit period was sufficiently reliable for the purposes of our audit work.
Conclusion
Our audit revealed no significant instances of noncompliance that must be reported under generally accepted government auditing standards.
| Date published: | July 22, 2020 |
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