GASB videos help gov't officials navigate financials

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board has begun posting a new series of videos to help elected officials and other stakeholders understand the information included in government financial reports and how they can use it.

Viewers can watch videos by topic to focus on specific sections, or follow the full series for a broader understanding. 

"This series of short videos is geared toward elected officials to help them understand in straightforward, layman's terms the information in each section of a government financial report as well as how they might use that information," said GASB chair Joel Black in a statement. "We are excited to release these videos and know our stakeholders will benefit from them."

The collection includes 16 videos, each ranging from 5 to 10 minutes in length. It includes a three-part introduction to financial reporting, followed by 13 videos that each address key areas of the annual comprehensive financial report.

The main areas include each of the four sets of financial statements included in the ACFR, management's discussion & analysis, and topics likely to be of interest to viewers like pensions, capital assets, and budgetary comparison schedules.

The videos, created using a whiteboard approach, are designed to be viewed in their entirety as a comprehensive series for viewers who want to understand the majority of the financial report, or individually if a viewer only wants to focus on a particular part of the financial report.

In the past, GASB has published guides for elected officials and other financial statement users in printed or PDF format that cover similar information through its website. The new video series aims to provides a modern, engaging alternative to the earlier guides.

Black discussed his plans for the video series during an interview last year with Accounting Today: "Let's improve the value of the financial report for governments. The report is big and it's pretty technical, and written for technical people. City council members and county commissioners and state legislators are not accountants, they're not technical people. Yet they're a user of this report, so we are developing a series of videos that break down all the different parts of the report. They're not going to be kind of talking-heady videos, but rather, they're going to bring up an example of this part of the report we're talking about, have a whiteboard and telling, in more layman's terms, what's the purpose of this report. As an elected official, how might I use this report?"

The 16-video series can be streamed or downloaded through the GASB website at www.gasb.org/train.