Accounting, cash, and banking: Government fund accounting and treasury experience
My experience in government finance is broad. In my last year at the Maine Community College System, a public system of seven colleges and two affiliated entities that spent $272 million in FY2026, I handled the System's complex accounting, ran its cash and banking, performed the bond accounting, and held fiscal authority over its largest grants.
One Fiscal Year
- More than 17,000 journal lines across 101 main accounts and 300 cost centers, and $148.7 million in revenue recorded and reconciled, for seven colleges and two affiliated entities.
- The accounts ran the full width of the chart: cash and investments, appropriation and grant revenue, system-wide contracts before allocation, and bonds and interest payable.
Maine Community College System, one fiscal year
101 general ledger accounts, by type
The distinct accounts I posted to in one year, across every posting type in the chart of accounts. Breadth is the point: the work ran from cash and investments through revenue to expense and liabilities.
Accounts posted to under my own user id. Percentages of the 101 total. Cost centers touched: 300.
Table view
| Account type | Accounts | Share | Mostly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Other expense (6xxx to 7xxx) | 39 | 39% | Professional fees, ITS, travel, telecom, software: the widest spread |
| Revenue (4xxx) | 22 | 22% | State and federal appropriations, investment earnings, nonmandatory transfers |
| Assets (1xxx) | 19 | 19% | Cash, campus operations, due to/from fund and campus, investments |
| Liabilities (2xxx) | 11 | 11% | A/P accruals, unearned revenue, bonds and interest payable |
| Personal services (5xxx) | 10 | 10% | Payroll taxes and benefits: Medicare, health and dental, retirement |
Cash and banking
I ran cash and banking for the Maine Community College System, a public system that spent $272 million across seven colleges in FY2026. Beginning in July 2023, I restructured how the system converted its state appropriation into working cash. The prior practice was to bill the State in twelve equal monthly draws and hold everything in the State cash pool. I moved the billing to a front-loaded quarterly schedule and negotiated an interest-bearing account with our bank to hold balances alongside the pool. Across the three fiscal years ending June 30, 2026, the system earned $6.5 million in interest on operating cash. Roughly $2.5 million of that is attributable to the change, measured against what the prior approach would have returned under the same spending and the same interest rates.
Behind the change sat the routine: I maintained the cash flow forecasting model and the short-term liquidity plan across seven colleges, managed and monitored the investment portfolios, and coordinated the Investment Committee's reporting and strategy presentations.
Maine Community College System, July 2023 through June 2026
Interest earned on operating cash over three fiscal years
Same spending, same rates, 65% more interest.
Prior-approach earnings are modeled on identical spending and identical interest rates, with the appropriation billed in twelve equal monthly installments and all cash held in the State cash pool. FY2026 uses a daily balance model; FY2024 and FY2025 are approximate.
Table view
| Approach | Base | Attributable to change | Total interest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prior billing approach (modeled) | $3,969,728 | $3,969,728 | |
| Restructured approach (actual) | $3,969,728 | $2,561,485 | $6,531,213 |
Reporting and automation
Most of the journal volume above went through tools I built.
- Bank data to journal entries. Using emerging AI tools, I built a program that turned bank activity into journal entries: about 2,500 entries a year, each reconciled and filed with its supporting documentation, in place of hand-keying from statements.
- Investment journals in Excel. The investment entries ran on a workbook I built, formulas rather than scripts, so a custodian statement became a journal without re-keying.
- Pooled activity across 62 funds. I built the allocation engine that spread pooled financial activity across 62 funds for monthly recording, replacing a manual process and removing the errors that came with it.
- Half the System's operating revenue. I planned, modeled, and accounted for 50% of system operating revenue, including allocation, billing, and period-end recording across seven institutions. That is where the $148.7 million above came from.
- The Budget Variance Report. Generation and distribution automated, replacing a build-and-email process with a workflow that ran the same way every month.
- Shared cost, one formula. The allocation tools spread an $8.8 million system-wide IT budget across eight colleges and a $10 million state appropriation across seven institutions, with the same basis applied to every college and the pieces reconciled to the total before anything was booked.
- The System Office budget. I developed and managed the $37 million System Office budget and produced the financial forecasts and variance analysis behind it for the CFO and the Board.
Bond refunding accounting
In May 2026 the Maine Community College System refinanced $11,385,000 of bonds issued through the Maine Health and Higher Educational Facilities Authority. I did the accounting.
The System retired $11.4 million of 2016 debt and issued $9.3 million of new debt at lower rates, keeping the 2035 final maturity. The new issue was smaller because $2,560,705.69 of the System's own money, held at the trustee bank in reserve, principal, and interest funds under the old indenture, was released at closing and applied to the refunding.
The work:
- Establishing the carrying value of the old debt. Premium on the 2016 issue put the balance sheet obligation more than a million dollars above the principal outstanding, and the refunding entries are measured against that figure, not par.
- Separating accrued interest from the escrow deposit. Part of the deposit was interest already owed. Booking it as a cost of retiring the debt would have overstated the refunding and understated the year's interest expense.
- Reconciling a $1.5 million difference between the general ledger and par outstanding. It was not an error. The ledger carried the debt net of its reserve fund, and the indenture designates reserve deposits as assets of the Authority rather than the borrower.
- Allocating the entries across the three colleges whose projects the bonds financed.
Every figure ties to the verification report, the final pricing run, the trust indenture, and the signed closing certificates.
The difference between the carrying value of the old debt and what it cost to retire it is not a gain or loss in the year of the refunding. Under governmental accounting standards it is a deferred inflow or outflow of resources, amortized over the shorter of the old debt's remaining life or the new debt's. Here that is about nine years.
Grants
I was the fiscal authority on six grants under three different rulebooks: the federal Uniform Guidance, the Perkins Act's own conditions, and a private foundation agreement.
- $21.3 million of Maine Jobs and Recovery Plan funds billed, distributed to seven colleges, and held to eligible use and period of performance.
- Main accountant for the $75.5 million Harold Alfond Foundation workforce training grant: about 150 college projects drawn from one restricted pool, with controls built from the agreement's terms rather than from federal regulation.
- Fiscal authority for the System's $2.7 million-a-year Carl D. Perkins award: the billing, the distribution of revenue to the colleges, and the budget analysis that held seven colleges and the System Office to the approved budget.