Your agency’s audit, review/attestation or compilation engagement has been completed. You have signed off on the report. The CPA who performed your agency’s engagement is back at his office putting the finishing touches on the report package.
How and when can you expect the report to be submitted to the Louisiana Legislative Auditor (LLA)?
This is a very important question to most
local auditees 
. The statutory
due date of audit, review/attestation and compilation reports to LLA is six months after the agency’s fiscal year end; and there are
consequences to local auditees whose reports are not submitted by the statutory due date.
The CPA should be able to give you an estimated date by which he or she expects to submit the report to LLA at the exit conference, if there are no significant pending items.
After the fieldwork is completed and the exit conference has been held, the CPA may still have some work to perform before the report can be submitted to LLA; or may have additional questions the agency needs to answer, or documents the agency needs to provide. It is important for the agency to resolve any matters it can as quickly as possible in order for the CPA to complete his work and to be able to submit the report to LLA.
The actual submission of an audit, review/attestation or compilation report to LLA is done through a web portal by the CPA who performed the engagement. The CPA has been assigned a unique user ID and password to access the web portal through which reports are submitted. Most questions LLA has about the report after submission will be directed to the CPA.
Although the CPA has the information required to submit the report through the portal, it is the joint responsibility of the CPA and the local auditee to ensure that the report is submitted to LLA by the statutory due date. The local auditee should maintain contact with the CPA firm regarding the status of the report until the CPA confirms that the completed report has been submitted to LLA.
Submission of sworn financial statements to LLA is either done through the mail (address is included on the sworn financial statement forms), or electronically to
ereports@lla.la.gov. Sworn financial statements are due to LLA no later than ninety days after the agency’s fiscal year end.
QUESTIONS:
Q. The CPA firm gave me a draft copy of my agency’s audit report. May I submit the draft report to LLA to make sure the report is submitted by the statutory due date?
A. No. The report that is submitted to LLA needs to be the final version, not a draft. In addition, the CPA submits other information besides the agency’s report to LLA when it submits a report; and has the login information that will enable him or her to submit the report and other required information through the web portal.
Q. Should I send a hard copy of my agency’s completed audit report to LLA to make sure they get a copy?
A. Multiple submissions of the same report to LLA should not be done. One report should be submitted through the web portal by the CPA.
Q. I gave the CPA everything he has requested to complete the audit weeks ago, and he said the report is finished. However, the CPA has not submitted it to LLA. The due date of the report is next week. What should I do?
A. Call the CPA to verify that he actually does have all of the information needed to finish the audit and submit the report to LLA. If the CPA has all of the information and appears to be unnecessarily holding up the submission of the report to LLA, please
call LLA’s Engagement Manager .
Q. The board chairman and the chief financial officer signed off on the agency’s audit report in the exit conference, but the report has not been presented to the board in a public meeting. May the CPA submit an audit report to LLA that has not been accepted by the governing board?
A. It is advisable for the CPA to present a draft copy of an audit report to the local auditee’s governing board as a courtesy prior to submitting the report to LLA. However, it is not required. It also may not be practical because the board may not have a meeting scheduled between the completion of the audit engagement and the due date of the report. An appointed agency representative, such as the board chairman, chief executive officer, or the chief financial officer should sign off on the audit report before it is submitted to LLA; but it is not necessary that the report be approved by the board prior to submission.