By Aberdeen Insider - January 8, 2026 in NOTICE OF AUDIT
OF THE FISCAL AFFAIRS OF
BROWN COUNTY
Notice is hereby given that the records and books of account of Brown County, South Dakota, have been audited by the Department of Legislative Audit for the year ended December 31, 2024, and that a detailed report thereon, containing additional information, is filed with the county auditor of Brown County and the Department of Legislative Audit in Pierre, South Dakota for public inspection.
The following findings and recommendations referred to in the report are hereby listed in accordance with the provisions of SDCL 4-11-12.
CURRENT AUDIT FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Sheriff’s Office Cash Internal Control Deficiencies
Finding:
United States General Accounting Office, Government Auditing Standards, 2011 revisions, state:
Internal control serves as a defense in safeguarding assets and in preventing and detecting errors; fraud; noncompliance with provisions of laws, regulations, contracts or grant agreements; or abuse.
We noted the following deficiencies in internal controls in the cash reconciliation process:
- The Sheriff’s and the Jail’s Office did not complete monthly reconciliations of recorded cash to financial institution balances during 2024. The reconciliation process serves to verify the Sheriff’s and Jail’s Office’s deposits and withdrawals have been properly recorded at the Sheriff’s Office and is necessary to detect errors in the Sheriff’s and Jail’s Office’s accounting system or errors made by the financial institutions.
- The Sheriff’s office keeps a weekly record of sheriff fees collected. On December 30, 2024, the Sheriff remitted to the County Treasurer, twenty-one sheriff’s fee collection reports for the time period of July 14, 2024 through December 30, 2024 accompanied by twenty checks totaling $311,533.29.
Recommendations:
-
- We recommend that the Sheriff’s Office perform monthly reconciliations of the total recorded cash to the financial institutions’ balance of the Sheriff’s bank accounts.
- We recommend that the Sheriff remit fees to the County Treasurer in a timely manner.
- We recommend the County Commission establish the timeframe for the Sheriff’s remittances to the County Treasurer pursuant to SDCL 7-12-19.1.
Views of responsible officials:
Recommendation 1 – In the short amount of time since the meeting with the State Auditor representatives, Brown County Auditor Lynn Heupel and Brown County Commission, current office staff devoted a significant amount of time searching and researching the quick books program. It is important to add that the QuickBooks accounting computer program that the office staff were trained in and used to using also went from a simple desk top version to a web-based program that was unrecognizable during this period of staffing turnover, which also was part of the paperwork issue the State Auditor mentions with the reconciliations. My office staff had to self-train themselves on basically a new computer program with no guidance or training from QuickBooks. They were able to retrieve most of the previous reports used to balance their deposits and moneys to treasurer reports, but the monthly reconciliations paperwork has taken more time to figure out. The staff was able to get that in printed form and said it can easily be produced each month and reviewed and balanced going forward and that will be done each month as recommended by the State Auditor.
Recommendation 2 – Sheriff’s fees will be remitted to the County Treasurer on a bi-weekly schedule. Current office staff has been able to “train” with new staff for a good portion of a year and now we have 2 office staff handling the bookkeeping process which has alleviated the burden of one office staff trying to handle all the bookkeeping duties along with regular daily tasks. The addition of having the ability and time to train an additional staff member has make it a more thorough and efficient process than when we were short staffed and went through 4 new hires in the past 2 + years before finding one that was able to stay long enough to be trained properly.
Recommendation 3 – I believe my staffs solutions and answer to the recommendations above and the protocol they have placed on themselves by doing the reconciliation on a monthly time frame and Sheriff’s fees being remitted to the County Treasurer on a bi-weekly schedule should take care of the time line concerns mentioned by the State Auditor’s findings.
Internal Control Over Financial Reporting
Finding:
The County’s system of internal control designed to provide for accurate preparation of the annual financial report was inadequate resulting in numerous significant reporting errors within the annual report prepared by the County.
Recommendation:
We recommend that the County strengthen internal controls over financial reporting.
Views of responsible officials:
Reporting errors affecting cash, equity, revenue and expenditures were noted during the course of the audit. With the turnover of employees in my department, they are learning the financial software, and I would prefer to go back and make corrections when the errors are found so that everything is correct. We did start having an approval process done through the financial software, for journal entries. When a department decides later that they coded a voucher wrong and asks us to shift it, we do that and attach a copy of the e-mail from them for supporting documentation.
Surplus Unassigned Fund Balance
Finding:
The unassigned fund balance of the General Fund exceeded the maximum allowed by SDCL 7-21-18.1 by approximately $4,177,000.00 as of December 31, 2024. This is the second consecutive audit in which a similar finding was noted.
Recommendation:
We recommend that the County comply with SDCL 7-21-18.1.
Views of responsible officials:
The other written comment on my office is the County’s Unassigned Surplus Fund Balance at December 31, 2024 was $4,177,690.20 in excess of the amount allowed by SDCL 7-21-18. I included the Operating Transfer amount of $8,538,797.00 because that is taken from the General Fund and disbursed to the Road & Bridge Fund, E-911 Fund, Emergency Management Fund and 24/7 Fund every year. If that amount is included, then we were below the 40%.
RUSSELL A. OLSON, AUDITOR GENERAL
DEPARTMENT OF LEGISLATIVE AUDIT
Published twice on January 8 and January 15, 2026, at the total approximate cost of $129.48 and may be viewed free of charge at www.sdpublicnotices.com and www.aberdeeninsider.com