It’s that time of year again. Not the holidays. Audit season! While the budget is the plan for the fiscal year, the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (the “ACFR”) is its final report card. Here are four areas to help a newbie navigate it.

Dust off your crystal ball. Setup the dartboard. It’s time to estimate revenues. And there is one thing we can say for certain about any revenue forecast: It will be wrong. But here are four ways to make your revenue estimates less wrong.

On my first day of Public Budgeting class at the Maxwell School, our professor asked the class, “How many of you think you will get jobs as budget analysts after graduation?” Out of 100 MPA students, only a few raised their hands. I was not one of them. In response, the professor said, “In fact, most of you will become budget analysts or will depend on one!” One year later, I began my career as a budget analyst.