PARIS — The town’s cash reconciliations are up to date, according to an independent bookkeeper hired to complete the task, and Town Manager Amy Bernard told the board the town has changed its procedures to ensure the town doesn’t get behind again.

“We’ve streamlined the process to notate why something’s off,” Bernard said. Smith has also trained the town’s staff to better record money coming and going.

Janet Smith was paid to reconcile state money, outstanding taxes, outstanding checks and other items. She found about $350,000 more in the operating account than had been anticipated, and her work meant that an approved short-term loan wasn’t needed. The town did not take out the loan.

Smith said the town had about $400,000 in outstanding checks when she first took up the town’s case.

Now, the town has about $160,000 in outstanding checks, which Smith said was typical for a town the size of Paris. “That could easily be one warrant,” Smith said.

With dozens to hundreds of pending transactions at any given time, the town’s bank statement is never an up-to-date picture of the town’s finances, Smith said.

She said there was no money missing, echoing Bernard’s earlier statements that fraud was not suspected as a cause for the town’s unbalanced books.

She said the problems were due to unclear bookkeeping. In some cases, payments to the town were mistakenly marked as credit card payments when they were checks, and vice versa, leading to confusion.

The audit, which had been suspended in March, is back on track. Before Smith’s work, the town hadn’t reconciled its budget since June 30, 2011, Bernard said at a previous meeting. The town is up-to-date now.

Bernard said that with better bookkeeping procedures, she expects the audit for 2012-13 finances will begin in September and be finished by December or January at the latest. That matches the deadline selectmen had set for the 2011-12 audit, which is being completed now.

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