Audit Report
Received by Audit
Committee
Audit Report
Received by City
Council
Moss Adams Observations Moss Adams Recommendations Did the City Agree?
Status Completion Date/
Estimated Completion Date
Cupertino’s budget process acts in accordance with
the significant majority of budget best practices
developed by the GFOA (76 of 80 criteria in total);
however, there are four elements of the City’s
budget process that lacked documentation to
support alignment with best practices:
1) Develop policy on balancing the operating
budget
2) Performance measures are linked to financial
outcomes
3) Monitor, measure, and evaluate stakeholder
satisfaction
4) Adjust broad goals, if appropriate (The City may
have an informal process for evaluating and, if
necessary, adjusting its goals and/or performance
measures during the budget cycle. However, there
is not a written policy or procedure that defines
how the City would adjust these goals).
Develop a prioritized implementation plan to support progress towards full alignment with GFOA best practices in the four categories that are not aligned.
Yes Completed 1) May 2023 Added balanced budget policy. 2) Performance measures linked to financial
outcomes in FY 2023‐24 budget document.
3) City Manager's Office to explore conducting a
community survey within the next 6‐12 months.
(ongoing item)
4) In early 2023, Council re‐affirmed five strategic
goals to provide a framework for city's priorities.
These goals have been prominently displayed on
the city's website here:
https://www.cupertino.org/our‐city/city‐
council/city‐council‐goals. As part of the Council
Prioritization and FY 25‐27 Work Program Adoption
Workshop that will take place in early 2025,
Council will have an opportunity to review existing
strategic goals, and either re‐affirm, or adopt new
ones. After the workshop, staff will update the
website to reflect newly adopted strategic goals.
The new goals will also be included in the budget
document.
Although budget development and monitoring
training is provided by Finance during onboarding
and revisited at a high level during budget kick‐offs,
departmental staff engaged in budgeting desire
more in‐depth and regular training to keep up with
continuous changes within the City.
Develop regular training and refresher courses for staff engaged in budget development and monitoring across City departments.
Yes Completed May 2023 Budget training added to the HUB.
Annual training will be required for staff working
on the budget each July. Continue to provide
regular training for base, proposed, and quarterly
budgets as part of quarterly kick‐off meetings.
Finance has developed several guides, tools, and
instructions to support staff across all phases of the
development process that are stored in several
places across the City’s systems. This has led to
inefficiencies finding and using the most updated
documents.
A. Create a dedicated space on the HUB to consolidate budget guides, instructions, and tools.
B. Create a budget lifecycle overview outlining each phase of the budget development and monitoring process with links to tutorials or systems used to support deliverables across each phase.
Yes Completed Jan 2023 Budget page added to Hub with budget guides, instructions, tools and budget calendar. In
addition, short Budget 101 videos have been
created and uploaded to the City's website.
The City uses OpenGov to submit, review, and
approve budgets; however, the status of budget
reviews and approvals occurs via email, leading to
challenges effectively communicating budget
progress.
Evaluate opportunities to provide more relevant status indicators in OpenGov, and train staff on OpenGov' s budget status and notifications features
Yes Completed Jan 2023 OpenGov automatically sends email notifications to staff when budget status is
updated.
As of 3/21/2023 Update as of 6/2024
2022 Budget Process Review
2/27/2023 3/21/2023