AZTEC — Aztec Municipal School District officials are making efforts to fix minor financial reporting and accounting issues after several findings were listed in the district’s audit report.

The district’s board of education was briefed on its 2012-2013 school year audit report during Thursday’s board work session.

Aztec schools saw two significant deficiencies related to Aztec High School’s activity fund and two findings deemed “other matters.”

While most of the audit findings were minor, they protect the district and state from losses, said Gary Martinez, the district’s director of finance.

“I felt with all these write-ups, I’ve learned something from them,” Martinez said in an interview on Tuesday. “I had no problems with what was wrote up.”

Both significant deficiencies listed concerned how money was handled for district athletic events.

One significant deficiency, Martinez said, was letting too many duties fall on one person who handled receipts and deposits and also prepared the bank reconciliation forms.

“It was not a good separation between duties to ensure you don’t find yourself with one person who can manipulate numbers,” Martinez said.

The district has added another staff member to help with the cash handling process to remedy the situation. The districts also plans to introduce tamper-proof bags for evening deposits to the bank after athletic events.

The other significant deficiency listed was a receipt totaling $328 that was not filed within the 24-hour time frame required by state statue.

Martinez said this issue will be resolved by the additional staff member involved in the process.

“Sometimes, we’re required to do things that a staffing pattern doesn’t allow to happen,” Martinez said.

The two other matters listed by the auditors were minor issues.

During the auditors’ examination of paperwork for bids submitted, some bids were not accompanied by campaign contribution disclosure forms. The forms are required to see if a company contributed campaign funds to an official involved in the process to approve a project bid.

Martinez said timing caused that issue. Bids filed while the district changed its policies led to that problem in the 2012-2013 school. It was also a finding in the 2011-2012 audit report.

The second minor finding was a cash balance in excess of about $98,000 for a Medicaid account that was incorrectly coded in the budget, Martinez said.

Additional funds added to the account after the 2012-2013 budget was submitted to the New Mexico Public Education Department were incorrectly added as cash on hand when it should have been coded as revenue.

“It’s really a coding issue, where it was coded as cash on hand when it should have been coded as revenue,” Martinez said.

Joshua Kellogg covers education for The Daily Times. He can be reached at 505-564-4627 and jkellogg@daily-times.com. Follow him @jkelloggdt on Twitter.