FY 2008-09 MEDMS Financial Data – Quarter 3 Due April 15, 2009

ADMINISTRATIVE LETTER: 41
POLICY CODE: JF/DI

TO: Superintendents of Schools
FROM: Susan A. Gendron, Commissioner of Education
DATE: March 26, 2009
RE: FY 2008-09 MEDMS Financial Data – Quarter 3 Due April 15, 2009

I am writing to remind you that your school administrative unit should be submitting FY 2008-09 actual expenditure, revenue and balance sheet data to the MEDMS Financial System on a quarterly basis.

Quarterly submission of this data provides your financial staff the opportunity to review the data and correct any errors and warnings that may be identified during the file validation process (this is especially important to do prior to the end of the fiscal year to ensure that your unit can submit an error-free file at year end and avoid the withholding of subsidy checks). One component of the quarterly submissions that needs work is the balance sheet submission. Balance sheets received for FY 2008 had two major problems: 1) they did not balance – assets did not equal liabilities plus fund balance and 2) they did not contain all balance sheet level transactions for all funds, which could contribute to the errors in balance. Please ask your staff to submit a Quarter 3 balance sheet and to spend a little time resolving any issues identified so that the year end file submission will be error free and will prevent any interruption to state subsidy.

Quarter 3 revenue, expenditure and balance sheet files should be submitted after the close of Quarter 3, between April 1, 2009 and April 15, 2009, and should encompass fiscal year-to-date transactions, from July 1 through March 31.

Should you need clarification regarding the quarterly financial data submission, please contact Joanne Allen, School Finance Coordinator at joanne.allen@maine.gov or Karla Miller, School Finance Consultant at karla.miller@maine.gov