New AFR Submission Process for Charter Schools, and CPA Audit Role Enhancement

The purpose of this letter is to inform charter schools that there is a new process for the submission of their FY2021 annual financial audit report data. Charter schools will now submit their annual financial audit report data through the Audit application in Texas Education Agency Login (TEAL). This new process replaces the submission of the financial data on the Excel data templates which were emailed to the Texas Education Agency (TEA) in previous years. This will also require that at least one person at the Charter School has TEAL Audit application access.

The Audit application is currently open and can accept the data feed submission of the annual financial report information for Charter Schools with non-profit holders and Independent School Districts. The data feed schedules for Governmental Charter Schools are scheduled to open by December 1. You can find the instructions for submitting the Charter School financial data feed in the Charter School Annual Financial Report Data Feed Standards under the section titled, Annual Financial and Compliance Report Submission-Charter Schools of the Financial Compliance Division’s Electronic Submissions web page

Another enhancement to the Audit application, has been the addition of a new menu option that has been added to the Certified Public Accounting (CPA) role in the TEAL Audit application. This is an enhancement of the existing CPA Audit role, and no additional actions are needed by the current CPA users. CPA firms that have TEAL Audit access and have been approved by the schools they work are now able to view and edit the data feed schedules. Please note that CPA firms do not have the ability to finalize the data feed schedules. The finalizing and closing of the data feed schedules can only be performed by Charter School and ISD roles. 

There will be two webinars on November 4 and 5 on the data feed process. The Charter School data feed process will be reviewed November 4, and the ISD data feed process will be reviewed November 5. To register for these webinars, and for any changes, please see the Financial Compliance Division’s Electronic Submissions web page.

Questions 

If you have any questions, please contact Paul Moreno by phone at (512) 475-2228 or email at paul.moreno@tea.texas.gov.

Sincerely, 

David Marx, CPA

Director, Financial Compliance