Delaware County, Indiana

Fund Financial Statements

A fund is a grouping of related accounts that is used to maintain control over resources that have been segregated for specific activities or objectives. The County, like other state and local governments, uses fund accounting to ensure and demonstrate compliance with finance-related legal requirements. All the funds of the County can be divided into three categories: governmental funds, proprietary funds and fiduciary funds.

Governmental Funds

Governmental funds are used to account for essentially the same functions reported as governmental activities in the government-wide financial statements. However, unlike the government-wide financial statements, governmental fund financial statements focus on near-term inflows and outflows of spendable resources, as well as on balances of spendable resources available at the end of the fiscal year. Such information may be useful in evaluating a government's near-term financing requirements.

Because the focus of governmental funds is narrower than that of the government-wide financial statements, it is useful to compare the information presented for governmental funds with similar information presented for governmental activities in the government-wide financial statements. By doing so, readers may better understand the long-term impact of the government's near-term financing decisions. Both the governmental fund balance sheet and the governmental fund statement of revenues, expenditures and changes in fund balances provide a reconciliation to facilitate this comparison between governmental funds and governmental activities.

The County maintains several individual governmental funds. Information is presented separately in the governmental fund balance sheet and in the governmental fund statement of revenues, expenditures and changes in fund balances for the General Fund which is considered to be a major fund. Data for the remaining County governmental funds are combined into a single, aggregated presentation. Individual fund data for non-major governmental funds is provided in the form of combining statements elsewhere in the report. The County adopts an annual appropriated budget for its general fund, certain special revenue funds, debt service funds and certain capital projects funds. Budgetary comparison schedules have been provided for the general fund and major special revenues funds in the required supplementary information. Budgetary comparisons for selected nonmajor governmental funds are presented in the supplementary information to demonstrate compliance with approved budgets.

The governmental fund financial statements can be found on pages 4-7 of this report.

Proprietary Funds - The County maintains two types of proprietary funds. Enterprise funds are used to report the same functions presented as business-type activities in the government-wide financial statements. The County uses enterprise funds to account for its sewer operations and the stormwater operations. Internal service funds are an accounting device used to accumulate and allocate costs internally among the County's various functions. The County uses the internal service fund to account for health insurance/flexible spending. Because these services benefit the governmental-type functions, they have been included within the governmental activities on the Statement of Net Position and in the government-wide financial statements.

The basic proprietary fund financial statements can be found on pages 8-10 of this report.

Fiduciary Funds - Fiduciary funds are used to account for resources held for the benefit of parties outside the government. Fiduciary funds are not reflected in the government-wide financial statement because the resources of those are not available to support the County's own programs. The accounting used for fiduciary funds is much like that used for proprietary funds.

The basic fiduciary fund financial statements can be found on pages 11-12 of this report.