It is no secret that the City of Indianola is behind on its annual audits, but help is apparently here.
Scott Hodges, partner at Tann Brown & Russ Co., the CPA firm contracted to complete the city’s Fiscal Year 2018 audit – and city leaders are hoping 2019-2023 as well - gave his first report to the mayor and board of aldermen this past Monday night.
Hodges said his team should be able to start the process with the first year’s audit next month, and he predicts that will be completed sometime in the middle of 2024.
“It’s going to take a little bit longer, just because there’s been such a gap since the last audit, and it looked like the last audit took four years to complete,” Hodges said.
Hodges comes with over three decades of experience in accounting, with a primary focus on governmental and nonprofit entities. He expects to have at least two team members working on-site in Indianola, but there are several staff members who may be involved in the audits from the home office in Jackson.
Hodges said Indianola is one of just a few municipalities his firm is contracted with at the moment, two others being the City of Jackson and the City of Canton.
“We can’t have too many at the same time because of the timelines that are involved with those, so we try to limit it to a fewer number,” he said.
Indianola Mayor Ken Featherstone noted that it was a difficult process for the city to find a firm that could take on the city’s workload.
“That was the problem with finding a CPA firm, the ones we contacted either didn’t do municipal work or the ones that did had (too much work),” Featherstone said.
Hodges said based on his experience, there could be delays along the way, mostly due to the fact that records over time tend to get lost, personnel change and even accounting systems change.
Tann Brown & Russ Co. is only contracted currently to complete the 2018 audit.
