Annual Financial Reports & Trusts

Annual Financial Reports (AFRs) have important information used to analyze the financial health of the City of Oklahoma City.

The best way to understand the results is to compare current reports from previous years and from other cities. Without that context, information in any AFR can be misleading.

Here are some recommendations based on suggestions from the Government Finance Officers Association to help you use an AFR to analyze a government's financial health:

• The City's past performance is normally the most relevant context for analyzing current-year financial data. But it's not the only context.
• The best way to see how the City is doing is to look at trends in key financial indicators like revenue, expenditures and fund balance.
• Trend data can be even more useful by looking at how percentages change in relation to other data. Examples include public safety expenses as a percentage of total expenses or local revenue as a percentage of total revenue.
• You need at least five years of data to have enough for analyzing trends. However, using more than 10 years of data can lead to outdated and irrelevant information.
• One-time items or changes in underlying assumptions should be carefully noted when analyzing trends.
• It can be useful to compare our City's data with similar local governments. But consider the following when making any comparisons:
  • Are the governments at the same level (like a state, county or municipality) and type (like general-purpose or special-purpose)?
  • Are there significant differences in the scope or quality of services provided?
  • Are there significant differences in the number of people served?
  • Do the governments define categories in the same way?
  • Are the governments from regions where costs and the environment are similar?
• It's more useful to compare our City's trend data to another city's trend data than to compare it with a city's data from a single year.

City of OKC Annual Financial Reports