Understanding fund accounting - Fiduciary funds

6 important questions on Understanding fund accounting - Fiduciary funds

What is the difference between fiduciary - and [governmental and proprietary funds]?

Fiduciary funds account for "other people's money," their assets, liabilities, revenues, and expenses are not included in the government-wide financial statements. This is different from the assets, liabilities, revenues, and expenditures/expenses of the governmental and proprietary funds, those are reported as port of the government-wide financial statements.

Fiduciary funds account for other people's money. Proprietary funds are not included in the government-wide financial statements. Describe the 4 types of fiduciary funds.

  1. Pension (and other employee benefit) trust funds.
  2. Investment trust funds.
  3. Private-purpose trust funds.
  4. Agency funds.

Governments almost always offer pension benefits to their employees. Pension plans are as a trust fund. Pension trust funds use the accrual basis of accounting and the economic resources measurement focus. What criteria must the fund meet to be a pension fund?

  • The pension plan qualifies as a component unit of the government.
  • The pension plan does not qualify as a component unit of the government, but the plan's assets are administered by the government.
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A government invests funds on behalf of others. The state government pools the investment assets of local governments and invest those funds on behalf of the local governments (economies of scale). What type of fund are we describing?

Investment trust fund.

What is a private-purpose trust fund? Similar together fiduciary funds, private-purpose trust funds cannot be used to support a government's own programs.

A private-purpose trust fund is a type of fiduciary fund that is used to report all trust arrangements (other than pension and other employee benefit and investment trust funds) under which the principal and income benefit individuals, private organizations, and other governments.

What is a agency fund? The assets in this fund are always equal to liabilities to the owners of the assets.

Agency funds are used to account for assets held solely in a custodial capacity.

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