School audit and SAAR
The School Annual Accrual Report (SAAR) forms part of the school's annual financial statements. The purpose of the school audit is to check and certify the SAAR to verify that the people named were employees of the board, and that the amounts paid to them are correct.
Leave liability reports and error schedules are provided to allow your school to finalise changes to the SAAR and to complete the required journals. You can then complete your annual financial statements for your auditors.
It is recommended that you download and use the instructions to guide you through the school audit process. The instructions are available on the Ministry of Education's website.
Key dates
| Date |
Activity |
| 02 February 2024 |
Reports are available in EdPay |
| 31 March 2024 |
Financial Statements should be with auditors |
| 31 May 2024 |
Annual Reports to be submitted to the Ministry
|
School audit reports
The following reports and error schedules are provided:
The SAAR contains summarised salary and wage information from your Staff Usage and Expenditure (SUE) reports for your employees from 28 January 2023 to 27 January 2024. It also contains specific financial data that you require for the completion of your financial statements (eg estimated ACC Levy data). This report will be available in February 2024.
The Leave Liability reports advise schools of the leave liabilities, as per the leave balances held in EdPay, that they need to report on for their non-teaching staff. These reports are available.
A number of payroll error schedules (Overpayments and Funding Code errors) are provided to allow your school to finalise your financial statements. Because these errors have not been adjusted within your fortnightly SUE reports they have been carried into the SAAR, which sums your SUE data into a single report, and therefore require correction in the financial statements.
The following documents will be available for download from the Ministry of Education's website in February 2024:
- SAAR Reconciliation 2024 Instructions, which guide you through the school audit process
- SAAR Certification form 2024, which schools need to complete.
Related links
Ministry of Education website:
Reports:
How to: