Last updated on April 8th, 2026

Annual Financial Reports (AFRs) are essential for maintaining transparency, accountability, and financial health in local governments. Municipalities are legally required to file their AFRs with the State Comptroller’s Office within 60-120 days after the close of the fiscal year. And yet, a growing number of local governments are failing to file these crucial reports on time—or at all. Late or missing reports leave taxpayers and other stakeholders without a clear picture of the municipality’s financial position and how public funds are being managed. Each year an entity fails to file an AFR, the task of catching up grows larger and more daunting. To compound the issue, when attempting to catch up on delinquent reports, local government employees often face the challenge of limited formal accounting records.

For this reason, the Office of the New York State Comptroller released a webinar last month aimed at assisting local governments in completing their delinquent Annual Financial Reports. The webinar focuses on helping local government employees understand the financial data needed to complete their Annual Financial Reports and where to find this data when formal accounting records are unavailable or limited. Here’s a broad overview of the key points covered in this webinar:

Questions addressed in this webinar:

• How do you complete your AFR when accounting records are missing?
• What source documents can you use to complete AFRs in the absence of formal accounting records?

Completing Delinquent AFRs: Webinar Key Points

• Consequences of not filing your AFR include reduced transparency and confidence in management, potential impacts on credit rating, exclusion from the OSC fiscal stress monitoring system, and reduced ability to assess financial condition and manage fiscal emergencies.
• Reasons for delinquent reports: the CFO did not meet fiscal responsibilities or was unaware of filing requirement, the municipality’s contact information is not up to date in OSC’s system, lack of board oversight.
• Source documents that can be used to complete AFRs include bank statements, reconciliations, debt records, claims abstracts, payroll and benefits reports, tax warrants, user accounts (sewer/water/electric), and board meeting minutes.
• Steps to follow when you need to complete a delinquent AFR with limited to no accounting records:

1. 1. Identify the significant events that occurred within that fiscal year.
   2. Compile the given financial data (i.e., bank statements, bank reconciliations, debt records, tax levies, etc.).
   3. Reconcile the beginning-of-year fund balance.
   4. Calculate the end-of-year fund balance (refer to the webinar for details on how to calculate this).
   5. Define revenues and expenditures.
   6. Review OSC’s AFR resources (e.g., training videos) and fill in AFR data.

Additional Resources

The webinar itself goes into much further detail regarding each step of this process, including examples and explanations. Other OSC resources that may be helpful include the following:

• AFR Information Page
• OSC Academy AFR training videos
• OSC data management unit (DMU)

Achieve Financial Health with RBT CPAs

RBT CPAs is committed to helping local governments address the unique challenges they face, including staying on top of their day-to-day accounting and preparing Annual Financial Reports. Our specialized government accounting team is here to support all of your municipality’s accounting, tax, audit, and advisory needs, so that you can focus on meeting the needs of your community.  Give RBT a call today and find out how we can be Remarkably Better Together.