Government Edition (GASB Fund Accounting)

Everything you need to keep GASB-compliant books in Kantivo: fund structure setup, GASB 54 fund balance categories, the government statement suite, and adopted-budget-to-actual comparisons.

What Government Edition Does

Setting a company's reporting standard to GASB (the standard governing US state and local government accounting) changes how Kantivo thinks about your books. Instead of one business with one ledger, your organization becomes a collection of funds — separate self-balancing ledgers, each with legal limits on how its money may be used. Kantivo is aimed at the small-government segment:

• Water boards, fire districts, cemetery districts, and other special-purpose districts
• Villages and small towns whose finance office is one clerk and a part-time treasurer
• Community associations that separate an operating fund from a bylaw-restricted reserve
• Any public body that wants proper GASB statements without buying a municipal ERP

Configuring Your GASB Entity

1. Add a new company and enter your entity's legal name and EIN
2. Under Reporting Standard, select Government / Special District (GASB)
3. Leave the default chart of accounts option enabled — Kantivo installs the governmental chart automatically (five fund balance accounts, revenue sources, expenditures by function)
4. After saving, open the new Funds page in the sidebar and choose Set Up Fund Structure

Your first company becomes the primary fund — for most governments, that's the General Fund. Additional funds attach to the same fund group.

Fund Types Explained

When you create a fund you assign it one of nine GASB fund types, in three families. The family drives the accounting:

A typical two-fund water district illustrates the difference: its General Fund (governmental) collects property taxes and reports Fund Balance, while its Water Enterprise Fund (proprietary) bills ratepayers and reports Net Position. Kantivo seeds a different chart of accounts for each family so both come out formatted correctly.

Creating a Fund

1. Sidebar → Funds → + New Fund
2. Give it a name your board will recognize ("Streets Fund," "Sewer Enterprise Fund")
3. Select the fund type — this picks the chart of accounts template
4. Create

The fund arrives as a complete, independent ledger already joined to your fund group, with fiscal-year settings inherited from the primary fund so all funds close on the same calendar.

Moving Between Funds

Kantivo's company picker understands funds: each one carries a 🏛️ badge naming its GASB type, and a View Combined — All Funds shortcut opens the government-wide reports. Inside a fund, everything works the way Kantivo always works — registers, reconciliation, reports — scoped to that fund's ledger.

The Five Fund Balance Categories

GASB Statement 54 requires governmental-fund equity to be reported by spendability constraint rather than as one lump:

When you add equity accounts of your own, the account form shows a Fund Balance Classification selector so each account lands in the right category on the disclosure report. Proprietary funds show the three Net Position choices instead.

Single-Fund Balance Sheet

On the Funds page, every fund row has a Balance Sheet button. Governmental funds get a Balance Sheet ending in Fund Balance; proprietary funds get a Statement of Net Position. Mid-year surplus that hasn't been through year-end close appears as its own "Excess of Revenues Over Expenditures" line, so the statement always balances.

All Funds, Side by Side

Government Reports → Balance Sheet by Fund lays every fund out in columns with a total at the right — the classic combined presentation from municipal audit reports. Rows line up across funds by account number.

Revenues & Expenditures Statement

Formally the Statement of Revenues, Expenditures, and Changes in Fund Balance — the governmental answer to an income statement. Pick a fund and period; Kantivo lists revenues by source and expenditures by function, computes the excess or deficiency, and reconciles beginning fund balance to ending.

Government-Wide Rollup

Government Reports → Combined Statement — All Funds runs the revenues-and-expenditures statement across the entire government, one column per fund plus a total. This is the monthly board-packet report: every fund's activity, one page, and its beginning/ending balances tie back to the Balance Sheet by Fund.

GASB 54 Disclosure Report

Government Reports → Fund Balance by Classification produces the matrix your auditor needs for the fund balance footnote: the five categories as rows, your funds as columns. Unclosed current-year activity is broken out on its own line so totals reconcile exactly.

Comparing Budget to Actuals

Because a government's budget is legally adopted, the comparison against actuals is a core statement:

1. In the fund, open Budgets and enter the adopted amounts by account for the fiscal year
2. Run Government Reports → Budget vs Actual for the fund and period

Every line reports Budgeted, Actual, Variance, and Variance %, plus a color status: expenditure accounts turn 🟡 at 90% consumed and 🔴 past 100%; revenue accounts turn 🔴 when collections lag budget by more than 10%. One click exports the whole table to CSV for the board packet.

Reserving Budget With Encumbrances (Enterprise)

An encumbrance sets money aside the day a purchase order goes out — weeks or months before the vendor invoices you. That's how governments guarantee appropriations can't be spent twice.

1. Open any purchase order's detail view
2. Hit 🔒 Encumber — Reserve Budget in the encumbrance panel
3. Kantivo posts a self-balancing entry shifting the PO total out of Unassigned fund balance and into Reserve for Encumbrances (Committed)

Nothing touches your operating statement — GASB forbids treating encumbrances as expenditures, and Kantivo enforces that structurally. When goods arrive, the reservation unwinds in proportion to what was received (one bus of three delivered = one third released); the true expenditure posts through the normal PO-to-bill conversion. A Cancel Encumbrance action releases whatever remains, and at fiscal year end you decide per PO: carry the open amount into the new year or let it lapse.

Track everything open in Government Reports → Open Encumbrances.

Journalizing the Adopted Budget (Enterprise)

When your board adopts the budget, Kantivo can record it the way GASB systems traditionally do — as formal ledger entries:

1. Build the budget and enter adopted amounts per account
2. Click 📋 Post to Budgetary GL on the budget screen
3. Kantivo writes the adoption entries — Estimated Revenues debited against Budgetary Fund Balance, Appropriations credited against it

The entries land in a dedicated budgetary journal, separate from your actual books, so the memo accounts can never leak into real financial statements while the audit trail stays complete. A posted budget is locked: every later change is an amendment with its own amount, justification, effective date, and adjusting entry.

The Appropriations Ledger (Enterprise)

Six columns per budgeted account answer the only question that matters before signing a PO — is there money left?

• Original Budget → Amendments → Revised Budget — the adoption trail
• Encumbered — open PO reservations against the line
• Expended — actuals to date
• Available — what's genuinely left after commitments; negative numbers show red and mean an amendment is due

Estimated revenues get their own section with collections and variance. Find it under Government Reports → Budgetary Control.

Accrual Basis Per Fund (Enterprise)

Kantivo assigns each fund the correct recognition basis from its type: governmental funds run modified accrual (revenue counts when measurable and available — collectible inside a configurable window, 60 days by default), while enterprise and fiduciary funds run full accrual. Both the basis and the window are editable per fund if your auditor prefers different treatment.

Entity-Wide GASB-34 Statements (Enterprise)

Beyond the per-fund statements, GASB 34 wants the whole entity on two pages plus a bridge between the views:

• Statement of Net Position — Governmental Activities (all governmental funds plus internal service) and Business-type Activities (enterprise funds) side by side; fiduciary money is excluded since it isn't the government's.
• Statement of Activities — expenses by function offset first by the revenues those functions earn themselves (charges, fees, permits, fines), exposing each function's net cost; taxes and aid appear below as general revenues, ending in Change in Net Position.
• Reconciliation schedule — the mandated walk from governmental fund balances to Net Position of Governmental Activities, adjusting for capital assets and long-term debt that fund statements exclude.

All three live under Government Reports → Government-Wide.