Our financial results

Overview of our financial results

Operating result

For 2022/23, our Office had a deficit of $2.897 million (excluding gains on sale of assets). Our net operating results by appropriation are summarised below.

* The operating deficit excludes gains on sale of assets, which were $19,000 for the year.

The deficit of $5.272 million relating to our Audit and Assurance Services reflects the limited availability of auditors in the first half of the year, arising from Covid-19, which affected our progress to complete annual audits. The deficit is also attributable to higher costs incurred in resourcing audits (such as relocations, costs of attracting staff from overseas, and higher personnel costs) and inflationary pressures (such as insurance) throughout the year. The deficit amount is transferred to our memorandum account, which was set up to help us manage the peaks and troughs in our audit fee revenue cycle.

The surplus of $2.375 million on the Statutory Auditor Function arose from the deferral of some projects to 2023/24 within the Office’s Information Systems Strategic Plan due to longer contract negotiations with some suppliers and more time spent than anticipated on implementing foundational cloud infrastructure. The surplus is subject to an In-Principle Expense Transfer (IPET) of $2.500 million approved by the Officers of Parliament Committee (OPC) in March 2023. OPC will be asked to confirm or approve an amended amount in October 2023. The IPET currently lets us increase the available budget in 2022/23 by up to $2.270 million for the deferral of projects that were not completed in 2022/23.

Memorandum account

The deficit for the year reflected higher costs and longer timeframes to complete our annual audits. The deficit was offset by capital contributions from the Crown to address the increased time and non-recoverable costs of audits arising from Covid-19.

Investment in our assets

In 2022/23, we continued our replacement programme for IT hardware, furniture, and vehicles. We also continued implementing our Information Systems Strategic Plan, which covers a five-year programme of work to improve our information systems and services across the Office. Due to delays in contract negotiations and spending more time than anticipated on implementing our foundational cloud infrastructure, we did not spend as much as we anticipated on IT software implementations. Supply chain issues also reduced the amount we spent on IT hardware.