State Fair hires CPA to find discrepancy in its books

A more than $200,000 discrepancy between two bookkeeping systems used by the Kansas State Fair prompted fair board members last week to approve a request by the fair manager to hire an auditing firm to figure things out.

They’ve had a hard time finding a firm that could handle the work, but hope to hire Scot Loyd at Hutchinson accounting firm of Swindoll, Janzen, Hawk & Loyd LLC, State Fair general manager Robin Jennison advised.

“What we have is essentially a shadow accounting system,” Jennison said. “It’s nothing nefarious, but I think there are kinks in the system. I have concerns about the way the whole system works.”

The fair uses one software program for budgeting, called SAGE, which he inherited when he took the general manager job, Jennison said.

Plus, there’s a second program that’s used by the state called SMART, which payments by the fair are made out of. The balances of the two are not matching up.

“The problem with SMART is we’re not seeing all that transpires here,” Jennison said. “It seems some things we’re entering in SAGE aren’t getting all the way to SMART,” he said.

The state zeroes out balances in SMART at the start of its fiscal year, which Jennison speculates might have something to do with the difference, if checks written earlier clear later, after the balance is zeroed.

He contacted the company from Manhattan that created the software, but they’ve never called back, Jennison said.

Jennison said he did find and solve some issues, involving about $100,000, but he’s not been able to trace the other $200,000.

“I’ve been looking since October,” he said. “I’m not a SMART user. I believe the money is there (in the Fair’s bank account.) I just don’t know where. If an outside person came in and looked at it, I think they could get to the bottom of it.”

He’s been back through two years of records, but he can’t go back further because changes were made in the system by the Kansas Department of Agriculture in 2017, Jennison said.

Besides finding the discrepancy, they’ll ask Loyd to suggest best practices and protocols for the Fair’s accounting procedures.

“I’m not terribly worried about it, but think we can have better accounting procedures,” he said.

Jennison initially sought $15,000 for the exam, but the board approved a larger amount if needed.