An Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, formerly called Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR)) is a set of U.S.
government financial statements Government financial statements are annual financial statements or reports for the year. The financial statements, in contrast to budget, present the revenue collected and amounts spent. The government financial statements usually include a statemen ...
comprising the financial report of a state, municipal or other governmental entity that complies with the accounting requirements promulgated by the
Governmental Accounting Standards Board
The Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) is the source of generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) used by state and local governments in the United States. As with most of the entities involved in creating GAAP in the United Stat ...
(GASB). GASB provides standards for the content of a Comprehensive Annual Financial Report in its annually updated publication ''Codification of Governmental Accounting and Financial Reporting Standards''. The U.S. Federal Government adheres to standards determined by the
Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board
The Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board (FASAB) is a United States federal advisory committee whose mission is to improve federal financial reporting through issuing federal financial accounting standards and providing guidance after c ...
(FASAB).
A Comprehensive Annual Financial Report is compiled by a state, municipal or other governmental accounting staff and audited by an external
American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) certified accounting firm utilizing GASB requirements. It is composed of three sections: Introductory, Financial and Statistical. It combines the financial information of
fund accounting
Fund accounting is an accounting system for recording resources whose use has been limited by the donor, grant authority, governing agency, or other individuals or organisations or by law.Leon E. Hay (1980). ''Accounting for Governmental and Non ...
and
Enterprise Authorities accounting.
In 2021, the Government Finance Officers Association determined that, when spoken, the four letter acronym for "Comprehensive Annual Financial Report" sounded like an offensive slur used in South Africa (see
Kaffir) and decided to deprecate the term.
Further reading
* Jonathan Walters
Are Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports Useless? ''
Governing
Governance is the process of interactions through the laws, social norm, norms, power (social and political), power or language of an organized society over a social system (family, tribe, formal organization, formal or informal organization, a ...
'' (September 2012).
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Comprehensive Annual Financial Report
Accounting in the United States
Government audit
Government finances in the United States
Single Audit
United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles