In NZ schools are audited by the Office of the Auditor General (OAG). However in most cases they contract this work out to audit firms - which is where we come in. We make a custom template that covers the emphasise that the OAG requires as follows:
- performance, in particular whether the school carried out its activities in an efficient and effective manner;
- authority, in particular whether the school carried out its activities, used its resources, and fulfilled its accountability requirements in keeping with the authority granted by Parliament and all other relevant directions;
- waste, in particular whether the school obtained and applied its resources in an economical manner and whether any public money is being wasted; and
- probity, in particular whether the school met Parliament's and the public's expectations of appropriate standards of behaviour in the public sector.
Deadlines tend to be tight. With December balance dates. many school auditors start their planning prior to December. Draft financial statements must be provided to the auditors by 31 March following the balance date. The audited annual report is required to be submitted to the Ministry of Education by 31 May.
The Ministry of Education’s provides model "Kiwi Park" financial statements for the schools to follow. Schools use PBE reporting - most schools have expenditure below $33 million so are categorised as Tier 2 PBE and able to use reduced disclosure from the Tier 1 reporting requirements.
Our Schools template includes specific engagement letters and reports, internal controls checklists for schools, specific workpapers for integrated schools, closed schools, testing local funds, performance waste and probity, specific payroll testing for schools, testing of cyclical maintenance, and accounts presentation checklists for PBR IPSAS (RDR).
For 2024 we added more detailed testing pages for some of the more nuanced work required. This was done under a bit of time pressure, and we hope to tidy this up for 2025. Contact us of you have any suggestions for improvement.
Update: 2025 Changes
We have now made a bunch of updates based on suggestions made by user firms, and have added the draft 2025 template to your accounts. It’s called NZ Schools (OAG) Audit (2025 - DRAFT FOR REVIEW) to make sure people know it is a work in progress and don’t get too deep into using it until we remove the DRAFT FOR REVIEW tag.
We couldn't make all the suggested changes, in some cases because we need to make changes to the platform features that won’t be possible this year, and in some cases because there was not a clear agreement across firms.
To summarise what we have done:
- Added a reminder on the A1 page, and an update to step on Partner review of work to confirm that “Relevant ethical requirements, including those related to independence, have been fulfilled, including independence sign-off by peer reviewers?”
- Moved the Provision for Cyclical Maintenance and subpages into the K section, tidied up a bit and also moved the Estimates - Long Term and Cyclical Maintenance Plan also into the K section as a sub-page. Removed some items repeated from the estimates page on the main page.
- Moved the Estimates - Long Term and Cyclical Maintenance Plan also into the K section as a sub-page. Removed some items repeated from the estimates page on the main page. Moved some items from the Excel page onto Performance Waste and Probity testing page and removed the Excel page.
- Moved the essence of the Excel workpapers (the instructions and steps) back into AA pages and removed the Excel workpapers.
- With revenue categories updated to split and move all related questions in together in same section.
- Tidied up the Governance checklist removing items not relevant for schools and also moved some items from the the items required and internal controls pages that are specific to governance.
- Updated the questionnaires by removing duplicate items so that there are effectively seperate questionnaires for board, management and admin.
- Tided up the internal controls questionnaire so that if Xero is chosen then many questions are not required.
- Added a question about access to school docs.
- We removed a couple of questions in X1 Going Concern that are not relevant to schools.
- Referenced changes in materiality in PM for Locally Raised Funds in Summary.
- Changed references to "business" and "entity" to more appriate language for schools.
- Added request for signed copy of SAAR report to items rrequired page.
Other suggestions for future development:
- Subsequent Minutes on rollover not able to moved up as this requires some deep development, and minutes page left as is for now as it is appropriate for large schools - just use n/a for any months not relevant.
- More built in Subtotals in trial balance - this is coming up next year.
- Add a section for parameters in AP in planning - coming up next year.
- It was suggested that the PBE IPSAS checklists be fine-tuned for schools - we have been left as is for now as these are based on standard checklists for large entities and we cannot fine tune for schools without breaking the inheritance model (as we have with the other T 1 and 2 PBE templates). We are making ways to do this but cannot change at present.
- Some of the questions on requests and sharing will be solved by the new sharing portal due out next year.