2024-001 Financial Reporting Material Weakness in Internal Control Material Noncompliance Condition: During our audit of the Authority’s financial statements, numerous adjustments were needed to properly report the financial statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. Certain accounts had not been properly reconciled and corrective entries were not readily available. Significant audit adjustments were necessary for several audit areas and the audit was significantly delayed due to these adjustments. Auditor’s Recommendations: The Authority should continue to develop and implement internal controls over both internal and external reporting, and the year-end close process to ensure reporting remains accurate and timely, with any unexpected financial data being investigated and corrected before it is reported. The Authority should consider additional staff training on development activities. Action Taken: The Houston Housing Authority agrees with this finding and related recommendations. During this audit, as these issues arose, notes were taken, evaluation of what had happened was made so that we could make the necessary adjustments to our procedures to prevent the continuation of these issues. In addition, in the previous year we hired a firm to come in and undertake a review of the finance department. The purpose of this review was to review our existing staffing levels, workloads, experience, etc., for purposes of proposing a reorganization of the finance department to address any deficiencies. We have reviewed the recommendations from this consultant and are in the process of implementing many of the recommended changes. There have been a number of staffing changes made during the year with the intent of improving the overall performance of the finance department. We are in the process of evaluating if additional staff are needed to expand the capacity of the Finance department. In November of 2024 the Houston Housing authority converted to a new accounting system. The Yardi system was implemented and we began processing all transactions on this new system. Unfortunately, there have been a significant amount of post implementation corrections and modifications that have had to be made and continue to occur. We are still undergoing these implementation and modification processes and as a result of this we continue to have to make adjusting entries to correct errors as they are discovered. To further complicate this system conversion there were a number of changes made to the management companies that we utilize to do our primary property level accounting. They have also been converting portions of their accounting systems to Yardi. Many of the same problems that have been encountered during our system conversion have also been encountered by the management companies. It is anticipated that most of these system conversion related issues will be resolved within the 2025 calendar year. The VP Fiscal and Business Operations as well as the Director of Finance are responsible for implementing the necessary process and procedural changes to eliminate the need for this type of finding for the 2024 audit.