Question

How is each of these items reported on the governmental funds statement of revenues, expenditures, and changes in fund balances

Answer 1

Statement of Revenues and Expenditures:

Revenues are shown by source or type, such as various taxes, fees and charges, intergovernmental aid, and so on. There is not a set list of revenue categories that must be shown, nor a required level of detail, which results in some variation from government to government. Expenditures generally are shown by function and object with the current operating expenditures presented apart from debt service and capital expenditures. Some governments break the debt service expenditures into their principal and interest components. It should be noted that smaller capital expenditures may be included in the functional categories, so the line "capital expenditures" may not represent the sum total.

Balance sheet:

The governmental funds balance sheet presents first a government's assets, resources it controls that enable it to provide services. Given the basis of accounting, these assets are generally current in nature cash, short-term investments, and short-term receivables. Most notably absent are capital assets. However, some assets that are not current or not financial may still creep in. For instance, the governmental funds may contain long-term receivables related to loans made from one fund to another.

Fund balance is the difference between assets and liabilities in essence, what would be left over if the assets were used to satisfy the liabilities. It is, quite literally, the balance of each fund. Fund balance may be the most widely used information in the entire governmental financial report, but it is also highly problematic because of inconsistencies in the way governments interpret the relevant standards.

Fund balance may be reported as reserved because it is related to resources that cannot be spent, like inventory, or because there is a constraint on how the resources may be spent that limits them to use more specific than the purpose of the fund.