AGA Today
Federal Accounting Corner
by Simcha Kuritzky, CGFM, CPA
Accounting
Terminology
Every area of expertise has its own
jargon. One problem with federal accounting is that often our terms come
from outside sources, such as private sector accounting, state and local
government accounting and the business world in general. Two terms that
are frequently used in overlapping ways are account and fund.
As verbs, these words are reasonably
unambiguous. Funding generally means providing budget authority,
but can mean providing cash. One can fund an account, program, budget
and so on. One can account for a fund, program, agency and so on. The
account can be in the form of financial statements, but could be
straight text, charts and graphs, or discuss the political or social
effects without touching on financing or what we generally refer to as
accounting.
It is the noun forms that are
problematic. I try to use account for general ledger or Standard
General Ledger (SGL) accounts, such as 1010 Fund Balance with Treasury.
The entities for which the accounts hold balances, such as 33X6220
Smithsonian Endowment Fund, I call funds. However, funds
can refer to funding, or the cash or budget authority behind the
fund. Treasury uses both terms funds and accounts to
describe the entities for which books must be kept. In fact, the listing
of fund symbols is called the Federal Account Symbols and Titles
(FAST). The FAST also describes these as fund account symbols.
The FAST categorizes accounts by fund group (e.g.,
General, Special, and Trust). Many of these accounts have the
term fund in their title, such as the Conscience Fund. The
Governmentwide Accounting (GWA) guidance specifies that accounts
are a subset of fund, and that accounts can be further divided
into sub-accounts.
At least the numbering of fund accounts
and SGL accounts tends to differ. Many of the four-digit fund accounts
(especially the salary and expense funds) begin with zero, while none of
the SGL accounts do. Trust funds tend to begin with an eight, which in
SGL parlance refers to memoranda accounts. However, there is some
overlap. For example, 1410 in the receipt accounts refers to investment
interest for the Economic Development Revolving Fund, while in the SGL
it refers to advances paid. For the Department of Agriculture, account
3103 can mean the fund for the Office of the Administrator for the Rural
Utilities Service, or it can be the SGL account for appropriation
transfers out.
It would be clearer if the federal
government could come up with consistent terminology for its financial
entities.
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Correction:
In last month's column, I gave as an example of an unfunded
liability the SGL account 2610 Actuarial Pension Liability.
Sharp-eyed readers pointed out that 2610 is only used by
agencies that administer pensions, and so sees very limited use.
I should have used a more universal account such as 2220
Unfunded Leave. Future reprints include this correction.
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This column is provided as part of a
free exchange of ideas in federal accounting, and is not reviewed
substantively before publication. Please send all comments, queries or
corrections to
Simcha.Kuritzky@cgi.com.
